Think back, my children. Think back to the 20th of March of this year when I blogged thusly:
NEWSFLASH! IVERMECTIN DID NOT WORK AGAINST COVID-19! (Does Doug Mastriano
Know This??)
Well, the science has been published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
This is what they did:
We conducted a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, adaptive platform trial involving symptomatic SARS-CoV-2–positive adults recruited from 12 public health clinics in Brazil. Patients who had had symptoms of Covid-19 for up to 7 days and had at least one risk factor for disease progression were randomly assigned to receive ivermectin (400 μg per kilogram of body weight) once daily for 3 days or placebo. (The trial also involved other interventions that are not reported here.) The primary composite outcome was hospitalization due to Covid-19 within 28 days after randomization or an emergency department visit due to clinical worsening of Covid-19 (defined as the participant remaining under observation for >6 hours) within 28 days after randomization.
And this is what they found:
Treatment with ivermectin did not result in a lower incidence of medical admission to a hospital due to progression of Covid-19 or of prolonged emergency department observation among outpatients with an early diagnosis of Covid-19.
And:
We did not find a significantly or clinically meaningful lower risk of medical admission to a hospital or prolonged emergency department observation (primary composite outcome) with ivermectin administered for 3 days at a dose of 400 μg per kilogram per day than with placebo. We found no important effects of treatment with ivermectin on the secondary outcomes.
So when PA State Senator Doug Mastriano uses "a record of success in other parts of the world" to support his latest "Medical Freedom" legislation we now know this to be factually incorrect.
And when he writes:
Another peer reviewed study conducted by physicians in Brazil found that those who took Ivermectin (compared to those who did not) had a 56% reduction in hospitalization and a 68% reduction in death...
We also know that this is incorrect as well:
An article shared on Facebook about an ivermectin study out of Brazil states that the "large, peer-reviewed research study proves ivermectin works." The article is being promoted by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, a group that promotes the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19. Two of the study’s authors are members of the group.
The study, one of its authors said, does not definitively prove that ivermectin works as a prevention or treatment for COVID-19.
Experts not involved in the study pointed out serious flaws in the study and conflicts of interest with its authors. The FDA and WHO have not changed their positions on the use of ivermectin outside of clinical trials.
We rate this claim False.
As The New York Times points out:
Any comment, Senator?The anti-parasitic drug ivermectin, which has surged in popularity as an alternative treatment for Covid-19 despite a lack of strong research to back it up, showed no sign of alleviating the disease, according to results of a large clinical trial published on Wednesday.
The study, which compared more than 1,300 people infected with the coronavirus in Brazil who received either ivermectin or a placebo, effectively ruled out the drug as a treatment for Covid, the study’s authors said.
“There’s really no sign of any benefit,” said Dr. David Boulware, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota.
