Major study of Ivermectin finds 'no effect whatsoever'

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/column-major-study-of-ivermectin-the-anti-vaccine-crowds-latest-covid-drug-finds-no-effect-whatsoever/ar-AANdt9s?ocid=BingNewsSearch

by MilnerRoute • 5 years ago

66 55 5 years ago

msn.com

zetalyrae3• 5 years ago

This may be fallacious, but I am automatically dismissive when a drug from one area of medicine is recruited as a treatment for a completely disjoint disorder. I need a somewhat plausible sounding mechanism of action, even if it's hypothetical. Because it fits a pattern I've observed where a drug is discovered, and it's on the cover of every magazine as a panacea[0], and then it doesn't pan out and it fades back into the small niche where it actually works.

So I dismissed HCQ and Ivermectin out of hand.

[0]: Interferon was on the cover of TIME in ~1980 as a cancer cure.

(EDIT: but I'm not an MD, just a crazy person who likes reading pubmed, so my views are pure superstition)

shakna• 5 years ago

Interferon is still used as a cancer therapy today. [0] Quite a number of drugs are highly effective in different fields of study.

[0] https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/cancer-in-gene...

rbanffy• 5 years ago

IIRC HCQ was flagged in computational models as promising, but the concentrations required to have an actual effect are a large multiple of the lethal doses.

There is a ton of politically driven disinformation around. Brazilian president Bolsonaro pushed both as treatments while, we now know, government representatives were stalling direct purchases from labs while negotiating vaccines with intermediaries in order to profit from sales to the government.

cheaprentalyeti• 5 years ago

...but the conentrations required to have an actual effect are a large multiple of the lethal doses..."

Which was the excuse they gave when they designed actual drug trials that gave patients lethal doses and ignored the testimony of doctors who found it useful at sub-lethal doses. And therefore a drug used by tens of millions of people a year(if not more) for the past five decades was declared too dangerous to use.

Addendum: I wound up arguing with someone that thus-and-such a trial was actually using what was considered an overdose in 2017 and they would not look at the entry in the PDR.

ekianjo4• 5 years ago

I am automatically dismissive when a drug from one area of medicine is recruited as a treatment for a completely disjoint disorder.

I guess you have never heard of Viagra.

zetalyrae3• 5 years ago

But viagra has a plausible-sounding (to me, I am not an MD) mechanism of action. Whereas in the first paper[0] about chloroquine for COVID, the claim is:

This drug has multiple activities, one of which is to alkalise the phagolysosome, which hampers the low-pH-dependent steps of viral replication, including fusion and uncoating. Other mechanisms of antiviral activity are poorly explained.

Which sounds like limited evidence.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7134866/

nradov2• 5 years ago

This article explains the suspected mechanism of action. I'm not claiming that ivermectin is actually effective, but the biochemistry is at least plausible.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016635422...

In general small molecule drugs often hit multiple different pathways. It's not reasonable to put them into neat little buckets.

zetalyrae3• 5 years ago

Good point. As I said, it may be fallacious reasoning on my part :)

I suppose what this underscores is: biology is immensely complex and first-principles thinking can only get you so far. Eventually, you need to test things with a big RCT to know what's going on.

s53002• 5 years ago

Quite unfortunately, the general public, and thus elected officials, do not appear to be capable of this sort of logical deduction.

_y5hn2• 5 years ago

Why would they without expertise in the medical field? It's not something to dismiss out of hand either.

jwbwater3• 5 years ago

A plausible mechanism of action is no where near good enough. Molecular biology is crazy complicated and lots of things that sound plausible don't work (and maybe do the opposite). I'll take "it works, but we don't know why" over "this is why we think it might work" every time.

ksaj• 5 years ago

There are actually a number of drugs where they specifically state the actual mechanism of action is unknown, but they do know from proper and continued clinical trials that the drug does indeed work. A lot of pain killers are in that category.

Here is a list of 68 drugs that are known to work, but apparently we don't know how or why:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Drugs_with_unknown_me...

copperx• 5 years ago

Interferon is a cancer cure (albeit limited to specific kinds, and abysmally low complete cure rates -- but a cure nonetheless for some people).

rsynnott2• 5 years ago

This may be fallacious, but I am automatically dismissive when a drug from one area of medicine is recruited as a treatment for a completely disjoint disorder.

I mean, it sometimes works, and obviously it's a very attractive idea (no need to wait on slow trials; drug is already assessed for safety) but precisely because it's such an attractive idea people seem to be overly credulous about it.

unanswered3• 5 years ago

This study is

(A) not published (B) not peer reviewed (C) not science (see a and b) (D) not actually studying the treatment protocols recommended by the flccc

This is not so much a study as it is tracking the outcomes of someone taking their pets' heartworm medicine without any advice from their doctor. It's farcical.

IfOnlyYouKnew2• 5 years ago

Your (A and (B) mean the same thing or, alternatively, (A) is wrong. (C) makes no sense, because every peer-reviewed study is, at some point, not peer-reviewed. As to (D): this outfit is recommending Ivermectin without any proof that it works, and therefore not a science-based institution from the start.

However:

The trial originally tested the results from a single Ivermectin dose in January this year, but was later changed to involve one daily dose for three days of 400 micrograms of the drug for every kilogram

So the dose was actually within the range your FLCCWTF recommends, which is “0.4–0.6 mg/kg”. Only it was given for three days instead of five, with the difference easily explained by one group choosing the regular dose that Ivermectin has been proven mostly safe at.

If it has no effect when taken for three days, it isn’t going to do wonders when taken for five.

unanswered3• 5 years ago

The flccc unequivocally states that ivermectin given alone is not known to be effective. That's why their protocols are not "give ivermectin alone", in any dose. Even the protocols they recommend that people can follow at home are not "take ivermectin".

Moreover, as to the claim that the flccc is recommending ivermectin with no proof it works; they have 60+ peer-reviewed studies showing that it works, a couple un-reviewed studies by avowed skeptics which show that it does nothing, and zero studies ever in the history of the drug showing it to be harmful. That is better than can be said for any other purported treatment for COVID.

javagram3• 5 years ago

This is not so much a study as it is tracking the outcomes of someone taking their pets' heartworm medicine without any advice from their doctor. It's farcical.

Farm supply stores are running out of Horse ivermectin due to people going and buying it to try and self-treat their COVID. https://slate.com/technology/2021/08/ivermectin-covid-cure-f...

nradov2• 5 years ago

For those interested in diving deeper into the research this site has a fairly complete index of all the other studies on ivermectin as a COVID-19 treatment or prophylactic. Most do seem to show some benefit, however they generally have weak methodology such as small subject populations or lack of proper controls.

https://c19ivermectin.com/

IfOnlyYouKnew2• 5 years ago

After that, see https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/huge-study-s... For the story how the largest trial showing benefits was proven to be fraud and retracted, and how the remaining evidence is no longer statistically significant.

A fact that the site above somehow doesn’t consider noteworthy.

betwixthewires• 5 years ago

I don't have a dog in this race personally, but I am interested in science, so I read your link. From it:

But the drug’s promise as a treatment for the virus is in serious doubt after the Elgazzar study was pulled from the Research Square website on Thursday “due to ethical concerns". Research Square did not outline what those concerns were.

Emphasis mine.

It then goes on to quote a man claiming all sorts of fraudulent accusations with no actual sources for anything demonstrating the validity of the accusations. I'm not saying the paper is not fraudulent, it could be, I'm saying I'd like to see more than some guy saying it is and a journal not releasing a similar statement.

That's a far cry from "proven to be a fraud" as you say.

I want to actually know if this treatment works, not emotionally decide beforehand one way or another based on my attitude towards the vaccines. It seems I'm in the minority here. If only you knew how frustrating it is. So I'll read your links, I'll read studies and stories saying it doesn't work, I'll read the FLCCWHYTHEFUCKCANTYOUJUSTTYPEFLCCC and I'll look at methodologies of all of it and figure it out for myself.

If you're going to claim fraud, a strong claim, make sure your source doesn't explicitly state that it is not known whether it is fraud or not. From where I sit, both you and the person you're arguing with have picked your horses and are no longer concerned with the truth. I will say though, at least they're arguing use of a mostly harmless, not experimental medicine that has other positive effects whether it works for covid or not.

argonaut• 5 years ago

This epidemiologist points out several major flaws with that website. For example, the website selectively picks the best results from each paper, which results in a bunch of unrelated clinical endpoints (outcomes/measurements), including endpoints that were not even each paper's main endpoint. https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1422044335076306947

jjeaff• 5 years ago

The most telling part of that site, or group of sites, is that long list across the top and down the left side. There are more than a dozen treatments that all seem to be as effective as ivermectin according to them. For such a mysterious, novel virus, that doctors have been stumped on how to treat, it seems like just about anything will work to treat it. From ibuprofen to hydroxy chloroquine, to ivermectin, etc...

fighterpilot4• 5 years ago

Symptomatic of crap science. Small N studies with weak methods being aggregated in meta-analysis. It's gotten to the point where I only believe large canonical studies that have been preregistered, and it's a shame that only a minority of all funding is dedicated to those kinds of studies.

aaccount• 5 years ago

https://covid19criticalcare.com/ https://bird-group.org/

Take a look at these 2 sites

mbergal• 5 years ago

I am not a professional, but this looks like a very good study and I trust its results. I think I am pretty convinced that Ivermectin alone is not effective at treating Covid. I still have hope that it is effective in preventing it. We need more studies on that.

I also wonder what the cost of this study was.

jwbwater3• 5 years ago

But, but, but this guy I ran into at the park would not shut up about it so it must work. Plus I just like to take neurotoxins. Why would I want to take some fancy new tech mRNA vaccine that would allow me to travel internationally when I can just take some of my dog's heartguard?

rsfern2• 5 years ago

Dismissing it just because it’s the active ingredient in heartguard is IMO a bit misguided; after all it is a known antiviral compound and there’s a plausible mechanism of action.

It’s more to the point and less inflammatory to focus on the mounting evidence that it’s just not an effective COVID-19 therapeutic.

Derek Lowe wrote an informative post discussing the lackluster nature of the current body of evidence after the big Egyptian study was retracted for fraudulent data the other week.

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/06/07/iv...

g42gregory• 5 years ago

There are other studies that suggest Ivermectin being effective. For example, this reference [1], lists meta analysis that seems to suggest effectiveness. Given the amount of money that flows into the pharmaceutical companies, I am very cautious in trusting studies that invalidate their inexpensive competitors.

[1] https://ivmmeta.com

evgen• 5 years ago

And most of the major meta-analysis papers have been checked and found to be wanting. Specifically, the ones that show any effectiveness all seem to apply a heavy weight to some of the least reliable or trustworthy studies.

rsfern2• 5 years ago

This site appears to be related to another site linked in a different thread that has been criticized for cherry-picking results and including studies with dubious methodology or statistical power.

Plus it still includes the large Egyptian study by Els-Alam et al that was retracted last month.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28177029

andersonvieira• 5 years ago

From the Revisions section in https://ivmmeta.com:

7/15: Elgazzar et al. was retracted and has been removed.

Blueskytech2• 5 years ago

It looks like the study did adjust the dosage level to a value recommended by advocates of Ivermectin like the FLCCC, .04mg per kilogram. However Ivermectin proponents have been vocal that many of the negative studies only administer Ivermectin well past initial onset of covid symptoms. I would like to find the data on how long after initial onset of symptoms, or a covid positive test, Ivermectin was given. I do not see any links to the current study in question all I see from the MSM links are PowerPoint slides and a symposium presentation. The study groups website only has links to a previous off label treatment study that included other potential therapeutics but not Ivermectin. If anyone knows where you can read the preprint I would love to take a look.

Blueskytech2• 5 years ago

Page 10 of the slides had the study inclusion information I was looking for, participants of the study were only included if they had "acute" onset of covid symptoms within 7 days. Proponents of Ivermectin will push back on this study since advocates have been clear that it is only an effective treatment if used as preventative prophylactic or within the first few days of symptomatic response to infection.

https://dcricollab.dcri.duke.edu/sites/NIHKR/KR/GR-Slides-08...

amanaplanacanal2• 5 years ago

I’m trying to imagine how this would work in the real world. Are we supposed to have the entire population taking it daily on the off chance they might get Covid, or are we supposed to start taking it every time we come down with a sniffle?

peakaboo• 5 years ago

The study was funded by Bill Gates.

https://trialsitenews.com/bill-and-melinda-gates-fund-global...

Major study of Ivermectin finds 'no effect whatsoever'

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