Ivermectin is a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved anti-parasitic drug for treating a number of parasitic diseases. It is also in wide use for that purpose, with an excellent safety profile according to US National Institutes of Health. South Africans are currently frustrated by slow coronavirus vaccine delivery. They are therefore pushing hard to use the drug as substitute, but could the Ivermectin drug really hold back COVID?
State of Play of Opinion Regarding the Possibility
National Institutes of Health recommends against the use of the drug, except in clinical trials. However, Bloomberg news reports South Africa approved Ivermectin as a COVID treatment on January 27, 2021. But this only allows local use on compassionate grounds, in a controlled-access program by individually-approved medical practitioners.
However, back in June 2020 Science Direct already published a report claiming Ivermectin ‘inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro’. In vitro means the researchers based their finding on research in a laboratory, not on human beings. But their key conclusions were none the less as follows:
1… Ivermectin inhibits the virus causing COVID-19
2… A single dose reduces the load 5,000-fold
3… Ivermectin is already approved by FDA for other purposes
4… The drug is in addition readily available on WHO essential medicine list
If the Ivermectin Drug Could Hold Back COVID, What’s Next?
Website Clinical Trials.Gov of U.S. National Library of Medicine reports a confirming study is in progress in Argentina. There, Corrientes Institute of Cardiology is conducting a single-center, prospective, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study involving 500 infected patients.
The number of doses of Ivermectin (and the dummy placebo) will depend on the body mass of each patient. Therefore this should go some way towards determining whether the Ivermectin drug could hold back COVID, and to what extent.
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Preview Image: Ivermectin Costs
