Recent Israeli research has returned the spotlight to the use of ivermectin, a drug used to fight parasites in third-world countries, as a treatment for those infected with Covid-19.
The Jerusalem Post reports that a trial conducted at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashome found that using ivermectin could help reduce the length of infection for people who contract mild to moderate infections of the coronavirus – at a cost of for less than a $1 a day.
A randomized, controlled, double-blinded trial (though it has not yet been peer-reviewed) was conducted by Prof. Eli Schwartz, founder of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Disease at Sheba, from May 15, 2020, through the end of January 2021. He sought to to evaluate how effective ivermectin was in reducing the viral load for those non-hospitalised patients infected with with mild to moderate COVID-19.
Ivermectin has been approved by for use by US Food and Drug Administration since 1987, and has been used to treat roundworm, lice and scabies amongst conditions. Previous clinical studies have shown it has some antiviral properties against viruses such as flu and the West Nile virus.
However, the use of the drug in the treatment of Covid-19 has raised some controversy, and the World Health Organisation has not been willing to approve it for use in the pandemic.
In Prof Schwartz’s study, some 89 patients who were diagnosed with coronavirus (and who had volunteered for the study) were divided into two groups: 50% received ivermectin, and 50% received a placebo, according to their weight.
Ivermectin was given to half the patients for three days in a row, an hour before a meal.
The volunteers were tested using a standard nasopharyngeal swab PCR test with the goal of evaluating whether there was a reduction in viral load by the sixth day – three days after the treatment was completed. Nearly 72% of volunteers treated with ivermectin tested negative for the virus by day six. In contrast, only 50% of those who received the placebo tested negative.
The study looked at culture viability, testing how infectious the patients were, and found that only 13% of ivermectin patients were infectious after six days, in contrast with 50% of the placebo group.
“Our study shows first and foremost that ivermectin has antiviral activity,” Prof Schwartz told the Jerusalem Post. “It also shows that there is almost a 100% chance that a person will be noninfectious in four to six days, which could lead to shortening isolation time for these people. This could have a huge economic and social impact.”
The study appeared on the MedRxiv health-research sharing site, but it has not yet been peer reviewed. The research did not prove ivermectin could prevent disease, Prof Schwartz cautioned, nor did it show that it reduces the chances of hospitalization.
The drug is very cheap and widely available – and could cost under €1 in developing countries.
Prof Schwartz’ noted that there was no significant side effects among ivermectin users. Of five patients referred to hospitals, four of them being in the placebo arm. One ivermectin patient was hospitalised complaining of shortness of breath on the day he was recruited but he continued with the ivermectin treatment and was sent back to the hotel in which the trials were conducted the next day in good condition
However, a researcher at the University of Jerusalem researcher, has questioned the safety of the drug. Prof. Ya’acov Nahmias said that ivermectin is a “chemical therapeutic agent, and it has significant risks associated with it.”
“We should be very cautious about using this type of medication to treat a viral disease that the vast majority of the public is going to recover from even without this treatment,” he said.
Schwartz posited that ivermectin was being ignored because it would not bring huge revenues. “There is a lot of opposition,” he said. “We tried to publish it, and it was kicked away by three journals. No one even wanted to hear about it. You have to ask how come when the world is suffering.”
“This drug will not bring any big economic profits,” and so Big Pharma doesn’t want to deal with it, he said.
But Merck, which manufactured the drug in the 1980s said in a public statement in February: “Company scientists continue to carefully examine the findings of all available and emerging studies of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 for evidence of efficacy and safety. It is important to note that, to date, our analysis has identified no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies; no meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and a concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies.”
Ivermectin is now off-patent.