Tag: ivermectin

Another Hysterical Ivermectin Claim Bites the Dust and Garners an Incredible Correction

I guess we are going to keep doing this.

The media’s behavior when it comes to even possible COVID therapeutics has just been abhorrent. In the case of hydroxychloroquine, the nation endured over a year of hysteria claiming the drug was dangerous (including a now-debunked, scam study and a rant by Fox News’ Neil Cavuto). In the end, though, hydroxychloroquine was shown to have an effect when used early in infection. How many thousands of people died because patients and doctors were pushed into using an FDA-approved, safe drug that was in large supply?

Were any lessons learned from that ridiculous ordeal? Of course not, because now there’s ivermectin. The media have spent the last several weeks claiming the FDA-approved drug for human use is “horse dewormer” while trashing Joe Rogan for taking it as part of a COVID treatment plan.

Yesterday, I wrote on a viral claim involving ivermectin, spread by blue checkmarks across the left, that asserted an Oklahoma hospital was so overwhelmed with overdoses from the animal variant that they were turning away gun-shot victims. That turned out to be so false that the hospital changed its internet homepage with a correction of the disinformation, noting that they did not have a single patient admitted currently that had overdosed on ivermectin.

But as I said when I opened this article, we are apparently going to keep doing this. Another ivermectin hoax has now been exposed, this time over a widely spread claim that Mississippi’s poison control was deluged with ivermectin overdoses representing 70% of total calls.

As a setup, here’s proof that the media went nuts with this, see here, here, here, here, and here.

Here’s the full correction per the Associated Press which was pushed out to SF Gate.

In an article published Aug. 23, 2021, about people taking livestock medicine to try to treat coronavirus, The Associated Press erroneously reported based on information provided by the Mississippi Department of Health that 70% of recent calls to the Mississippi Poison Control Center were from people who had ingested ivermectin to try to treat COVID-19. State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said Wednesday the number of calls to poison control about ivermectin was about 2%. He said of the calls that were about ivermectin, 70% were by people who had ingested the veterinary version of the medicine.

So instead of it being 70% of calls being about ivermectin, the actual number was…2%. And of that 2%, 70% of those calls were about the animal variant. In other words, instead of talking about possibly hundreds or thousands of animal variant ivermectin overdose calls, the number is actually infinitesimal, representing only 1.4% of calls.

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Fake News: The strange campaign against ivermectin escalates

What’s with the bizarre campaign against ivermectin?

It’s not just that the FDA has put out a quackish tweet (shown here by AT contributor Dr. Brian Joondeph, M.D.) scolding viewers that they are not horses or cows. That’s in reference to the fact that in some high-dose forms, ivermectin is used as a horse dewormer, begging the question about its effectiveness when it is dosed and formulated properly as a human medical treatment for COVID, prescribed off-label. The news reports repeatedly call ivermectin a dangerous drug, implying that all uses of the drug are dangerous, even when taken properly.

It’s now a lot of nonsense about mass injuries from people who take the horse dewormer form of the drug on their own to beat COVID, as if there is anyone out there advocating such an improper use of the medicine.

Here are a few of the screaming headlines from multiple news outlets:

Gunshot Victims Left Waiting as Horse Dewormer Overdoses Overwhelm Oklahoma Hospitals, Doctor Says -Rolling Stone

Gunshot victims left to wait as Oklahoma hospitals overwhelmed with horse dewormer overdoses, doctor says -Fox59 

(Funny that similarity, almost like the same guy wrote those headlines?)

Overdoses from anti-parasite drug ivermectin overwhelm rural Oklahoma hospitals – leaving gunshot victims waiting for emergency rooms -Daily Mail

Doctor says gunshot victims forced to wait for treatment as Oklahoma hospitals fill up with people overdosing from ivermectin -Independent

One problem: The story is fake.

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Rolling Stone Issues ‘Update’ After Horse Dewormer Hit-Piece Debunked

After Joe Rogan announced that he’d kicked Covid in just a few days using a cocktail of drugs, including Ivermectin – an anti-parasitic prescribed for humans for over 35 years, with over 4 billion doses administered (and most recently as a Covid-19 treatment), the left quickly started mocking Rogan for having taken a ‘horse dewormer’ due to its dual use in livestock.

Rolling Stone’s Jon Blistein led the charge.

On Friday, Rolling Stone‘s Peter Wade took another stab – publishing a hit piece claiming that Oklahoma ERs were overflowing with people ‘overdosing on horse dewormer.’

It was suspect from the beginning.

The report, sourced to local Oaklahoma outlet KFOR‘s Katelyn Ogle, cites Oklahoma ER doctor Dr. Jason McElyea – who claimed that people overdosing on ivermectin horse dewormer are causing emergency rooms to be “so backed up that gunshot victims were having hard times getting” access to health facilities.

As people take the drug, McElyea said patients have arrived at hospitals with negative reactions like nausea, vomiting, muscle aches, and cramping — or even loss of sight.“The scariest one that I’ve heard of and seen is people coming in with vision loss,” the doctor said. -Rolling Stone

Except, the article provided zero evidence for McElyea’s claims, causing people to start asking questions.

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Ivermectin found to suppresses tumour development

Researchers in Japan and the United States have found that ivermectin, a drug used to kill parasites, suppresses tumour development in epithelial ovarian cancer.

Ivermectin exerts an anti-tumour effect on epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) cells by interacting with the new gene target KPNB1. Because ivermectin is already approved to treat parasitic infections in patients, experiments for its effectiveness in an anti-cancer regimen is expected to significantly lower costs compared to untested drug compounds.

“EOC is a challenging disease to treat because of its heterogeneity. The mortality rate has stayed steady for decades. We need new drugs and also new drug targets,” said Osaka University Gynecologist Michiko Kodama.

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Ivermectin for Prevention and Treatment of COVID-19 Infection: A Systematic Review, Meta-analysis, and Trial Sequential Analysis to Inform Clinical Guidelines

Abstract

Background: 

Repurposed medicines may have a role against the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The antiparasitic ivermectin, with antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, has now been tested in numerous clinical trials.

Areas of uncertainty: 

We assessed the efficacy of ivermectin treatment in reducing mortality, in secondary outcomes, and in chemoprophylaxis, among people with, or at high risk of, COVID-19 infection.

Data sources: 

We searched bibliographic databases up to April 25, 2021. Two review authors sifted for studies, extracted data, and assessed risk of bias. Meta-analyses were conducted and certainty of the evidence was assessed using the GRADE approach and additionally in trial sequential analyses for mortality. Twenty-four randomized controlled trials involving 3406 participants met review inclusion.

Therapeutic Advances: 

Meta-analysis of 15 trials found that ivermectin reduced risk of death compared with no ivermectin (average risk ratio 0.38, 95% confidence interval 0.19–0.73; n = 2438; I2 = 49%; moderate-certainty evidence). This result was confirmed in a trial sequential analysis using the same DerSimonian–Laird method that underpinned the unadjusted analysis. This was also robust against a trial sequential analysis using the Biggerstaff–Tweedie method. Low-certainty evidence found that ivermectin prophylaxis reduced COVID-19 infection by an average 86% (95% confidence interval 79%–91%). Secondary outcomes provided less certain evidence. Low-certainty evidence suggested that there may be no benefit with ivermectin for “need for mechanical ventilation,” whereas effect estimates for “improvement” and “deterioration” clearly favored ivermectin use. Severe adverse events were rare among treatment trials and evidence of no difference was assessed as low certainty. Evidence on other secondary outcomes was very low certainty.

Conclusions: 

Moderate-certainty evidence finds that large reductions in COVID-19 deaths are possible using ivermectin. Using ivermectin early in the clinical course may reduce numbers progressing to severe disease. The apparent safety and low cost suggest that ivermectin is likely to have a significant impact on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic globally.

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Ivermectin: a multifaceted drug of Nobel prize-honoured distinction with indicated efficacy against a new global scourge, COVID-19

We believe that the evidence to date supports the worldwide extension of IVM treatments for COVID-19, complementary to immunizations. The indicated biological mechanism of IVM, competitive binding with SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, is likely non-epitope specific, as reviewed [8], possibly yielding full efficacy against emerging viral mutant strains. IVM has been safely used in 3.7 billion doses since 1987, well tolerated even at much greater than standard doses [34,35] and used without serious AEs in the three high-dose COVID-19 treatment studies noted above [34,36,37]. In the current international emergency of COVID-19, with mutant viral strains, vaccination refusals and potentially waning immunities over months presenting new challenges, IVM can be an effective component of the mix of therapeutics deployed against this pandemic.

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