Ivermectin has been so unhelpful to COVID patients, it's probably time to stop testing it.
Ivermectin didn't keep COVID patients out of the hospital or help them recover faster in a new trial.The antiparasitic drug ivermectin has been falsely hailed as a coronavirus cure thanks to widespread misinformation. A new large study shows that the drug does not reduce hospitalizations or decrease time to recovery from COVID-19, aligning with many other trials in which ivermectin failed to help patients with coronavirus infections.
Researchers in Brazil studied and compared more than 1,300 symptomatic COVID-19 patients. In their double-blind study, half of the patients were treated for three days with ivermectin while the other half received a placebo. Ivermectin did not help with a number of other health measures such as viral clearance after a week, speed of recovery, hospitalization, or risk of death. The findings add to a growing pool of research disproving the drug’s touted benefits against coronavirus.
The type of ivermectin administered in this study is created for humans, but there is also another version meant for use in livestock. The Food and Drug Administrationusing the animal version of ivermectin to fight COVID-19—something some people have done in attempts to cure or preempt infection. The agency warns that it can cause nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, neurologic disorders, and potentially severe hepatitis that requires hospitalization.