“People are going to animal feed stores and getting a formulation that’s highly concentrated because it’s for 1,000-pound animals,” Dr. Varney said. “They’re opening themselves to great potential harm.”
Ivermectin was introduced as a veterinary drug in the late 1970s, and the discovery of its effectiveness in combating certain parasitic diseases in humans won the 2015 Nobel Prize for medicine.
Though it has not been shown to be effective in treating Covid, people are now clamoring to get the drug, trading tips in Facebook groups and on Reddit. Some physicians have compared the phenomenon to last year’s surge of interest in hydroxychloroquine, though there are more clinical trials evaluating ivermectin.
The Food and Drug Administration weighed in last week. “You are not a horse,” the agency tweeted, with a warning explaining that ivermectin is not F.D.A.-approved for treating or preventing Covid-19 and that taking large doses can cause serious harm.
A recent review of 14 ivermectin studies, with more than 1,600 participants, concluded that none provided evidence of the drug’s ability to prevent Covid, improve patient conditions or reduce mortality. Another 31 studies are still underway to test the drug.
“There is great interest in repurposing well-known inexpensive drugs such as ivermectin that are readily available as an oral tablet,” Maria-Inti Metzendorf and Stephanie Weibel, the authors of the review, said in an email to The Times. “Even if these circumstances seem ideal, the results from the available clinical studies carried out so far cannot confirm the widely advertised benefits.”
One of the largest trials studying ivermectin for Covid-19 treatment, called the Together Trial, was halted by the data safety monitoring board on Aug. 6 because the drug had been shown to be no better than a placebo at preventing hospitalization or prolonged stay in the emergency room. Dr. Edward Mills, a professor at McMaster University who led the study, which enrolled more than 1,300 patients, said the team would have discontinued it earlier were it not for the level of public interest in ivermectin.
“The data safety person said, ‘This is now futile and you’re offering no benefit to patients involved in the trial,’” Dr. Mills said.
Read it all at
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/heal ... tions.html