Ivermectin is a popular antiparasitic medicine that is approved by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and World Health Organisation (WHO). Ivermectin treatment is largely used in several countries to treat worm infections and severe disease caused by parasitic worms.
It is also used to treat head lice infections and scabies. The Ivercare brand of Ivermectin intended to use in horses in order to kill worms and many other kinds of parasitic severe disease.
Ivermectin Treatment
Ivermectin is among the essential medicines of the World Health Organization. The medication can be considered a wonder drug depending on its beneficial impact, safety and versatility.
Ivermectin treatment is globally used to treat onchocerciasis or river blindness, and strongyloidiasis the intestinal infection caused by threadworms and other worm infections. Ivermectin is an anthelmintic drug that works by meddling with ther nerves and muscles of worms that paralyzes and kills worms.
Ever since Ivermectin was initially used to treat River blindness or Onchocerciasis in humans, it is helping tremendously with certain kinds of mild to severe disease. Ivermectin treatment has proved its role as a wonder drug in human health by improving general health, well-being, and nutrition in numerous people worldwide.
Ivermectin treatment effectively works to treat many internal nematode infections such as strongyloidiasis, Onchocerciasis, Filariasis, Gnathostomiasis, Trichuriasis, Ascariasis, and cutaneous larva migrans. It is also a suitable oral treatment for ectoparasitic infections such as scabies and lice.
Ivermectin tablets are used to treat parasitic diseases and parasitic worms. Ivermectin is still being studied through methods trial design, adaptive platform trial, meta-analysis, placebo-controlled trial, and platform trial to treat a variety of viruses and many types of severe disease. Ivermectin tablets are considered a safe and effective medicine for humans when you take the dosage as recommended by a healthcare professional.
Ivermectin cream is FDA-approved to treat skin conditions such as rosacea. Ivermectin tablets are used off-label to treat several other infectious diseases.
Does Ivermectin treatment work against Covid 19
Only a few treatments have proven their effectiveness against covid 19. The effectiveness of Ivermectin treatment in averting hospitalization or extended emergency observation among outpatients Covid 19 and Cornonavirus 2 is unclear.
Ivermectin treatment does not make significant differences or help in a lesser incidence of hospital admissions due to Covid 19 development or continued emergency observation among cases with early diagnosis of Covid 19.
Earlier in 2021, a large study was established to determine the clinical benefit of Ivermectin for covid 19 and the effects of early treatment with Ivermectin among the covid 19 patients. They found that Ivermectin does not decrease the relative risk of patient hospitalization, and severe disease in the case of covid 19.
How Ivermectin medicine thought to work on Covid 19
SARS-CoV-2 makes you sick by infecting the person’s cells. As it enters the cell, it makes heaps of replications of itself and starts spreading throughout the body. The virus has the capability of reducing the body’s ability to fight the infection.
During the cell infection, some viral proteins enter the nucleus of the cell decreasing body’s ability to combat the virus which means the condition gets worse. To enter the nucleus of the cell, the viral proteins necessitate binding to a cargo transporter that allows them to get in.
Ivermectin medication is thought to block the cargo transporter preventing the viral proteins from getting into the cell nuclei. This way some scientists believe Ivermectin treatment may be helpful against SARS-CoV-2. It is assumed that by taking an Ivermectin tablet, the body of patients with covid 19 can combat the infection as it does normally.
Clinical trials
Ivermectin, the antiparasitic drug that possesses anti-inflammatory and antiviral properties has been tested against Covide 19 in numerous clinical trials. Experts evaluated the usefulness of Ivermectin treatment in diminishing mortality in secondary consequences and in chemoprophylaxis among people with high chances of getting Covid 19 infection.
Meta-analysis was directed and the inevitability of the evidence was evaluated using the GRADE approach and also in clinical trials chronological analyses for mortality. 24 randomized clinical trials involving 3405 patients with covid 19 met review enclosure.
In 15 randomized controlled trials, Meta-analyses found that Ivermectin treatment lessened the risk of death as compared with no Ivermectin treatment in patients with covid 19. This outcome was established in a clinical trial sequential analysis. Low certainty evidence uncovered that Ivermectin prophylaxis diminished Covid 19 infection by an average of 86%. Secondary results offered less convincing evidence.
Low certainty evidence implied that there may be no advantage of using Ivermectin in patients with covid 19 when a patient necessitates mechanical ventilation. The experts found no significant difference with Ivermectin treatment of covid 19 on the need for mechanical ventilation, the days hospitalized patients required mechanical ventilation, and the relative risk of death.
However, effect evaluations for deterioration and improvement clearly favored the use of the Ivermectin group. Among the randomized clinical trials, serious adverse events were rare and evidence of no alteration was evaluated as low-certainty evidence.
A systematic review, meta-analysis, and trial sequential analysis are required to inform clinical guidelines. Still, there are several clinical trials are in the process to test Ivermectin treatment in patients with covid 19 and other existing drugs for the treatment of covid 19.
36–40 Trial sequential analysis when a meta-analysis is imperiled for recurring statistical calculation, there is an overstated risk that trusting point estimations and confidence intervals will produce counterfeit implications. In a meta-analysis, it is significant to diminish the risk of creating a false-positive or false-negative decision.
Placebo-controlled trial/ Randomized clinical trials
A randomized clinical trial is performed in clinical characterisation. It is a study in which the involved intervention group or participants are separated by chance into different groups to compare different types of treatments or other interventions. The clinical trial is performed to evaluate the effectiveness of a certain medication targeting the intention to treat population.
Randomized controlled trials or RTCs are prospective studies performed in order to evaluate the usefulness of an existing treatment or new intervention. These clinical trials examine cause-effect connections between an intervention and the outcome measures.
As Ivermectin was widely been considered as a possible treatment for covid 19 but demonstrated uncertain clinical benefits and clinical recovery in many clinical trials. Another group of experts performed two large-scale randomized clinical trials, with the intention to treat population. The double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial was performed in order to determine the efficacy of Ivermectin in treating patients with covid 19.
In the intervention group, Ivermectin administered, 0.4mg/kg of body weight every day for 3 days. 609 inpatients and 549 outpatients were given placebo and tablets for 3 days and analyzed. In hospitalized patients, the comprehensive clinical recovery was significantly higher in the Ivermectin group compared to the placebo group.
The hospital stays were meaningfully longer in the Ivermectin tablets group compared to the placebo-receiving group. In outpatients, the duration of fever was pointedly shorter in the Ivermectin group than in the placebo group.
On the 7th day of Ivermectin treatment for covid 19, fever, cough, and weakness were meaningfully higher in the placebo group compared to the Ivermectin tablet group. Of all outpatients, 7% of patients in the Ivermectin group and 5% in the placebo group required to be hospitalized.
The RT-PCR result after 5 days of treatment of covid 19 was negative for 265 patients in the Ivermectin group and 32% in the placebo group. The conclusion data demonstrated that Ivermectin as compared to the placebo group does not hold any significant benefit in clinical recovery, reduced admission to ICU, need for invasion ventilation, and hospitalized patients’ deaths.
Similarly, no evidence supports the Ivermectin administered or prescription on recovery, fewer hospitalized patients with covid 19 and amplified negative RT-PCR assay for SARS-CoV-2 five days after treatment in outpatients. These findings do not suggest that Ivermectin use to treat minor to severe diseases.
In another clinical trial sequential analysis was performed to know whether Ivermectin treatment of covid 19 could diminish symptom onset and hospitalization with early treatment or not. One group of patients was treated with Ivermectin treatment and the other with placebo treatment of covid 19.
During the trial phase, patients were not allowed to take antiviral drugs or chloroquine. The result demonstrated that 5.6% of patients required hospitalization in the Ivermectin treatment group and 8.4 % of patients in the placebo treatment group. The clinical benefit and outcomes don’t make a statistically significant difference in both group.
KU Medical center study about the treatment of Covid 19 using Ivermectin
Like many other national institutes KU Medical Center was also FDA approved research institution to collaborate on covid 19 clinical trials and systematic review as a hope and an intention to treat population.
This particular study on Ivermectin and a few other drugs to measure their efficiency as a treatment for covid 19 performed by the name ACTIV-6. 1800 participants enrolled in this study. The participants got packages containing either a dose of placebo or Ivermectin at their residences.
As it was an FDA-approved placebo-controlled trial, a double-blind study, the participants involved had no idea whether they got the package with Ivermectin or not.
This study was different because usually participants are called to visit the clinical trial centers but here they received their parcels at their homes. When the outcome data were analyzed, researchers got two results.
The primary outcome data was the time patients took to recover from coronavirus disease or the median recovery time. The secondary outcomes observed the number of hospitalized patients or patient deaths within each group.
Interim analyses by researchers showed that the median recovery time for patients taking Ivermectin was 12 days and for placebo was 13 days. In the Ivermectin group, there were 10 hospitalized patients or deaths and in the placebo group, nine were there.
However, it is not a statistically significant difference so researchers came to the conclusion that these outcomes do suggest the use of Ivermectin as a treatment for covid 19 disease progression or mild to moderate coronavirus disease.
The use of Ivermectin treatment for covid 19 has not shown any significant difference in disease progression, the severity of covid 19, or the length of severe illness due to coronavirus disease. The outcome measures and most significant takeaway from this particular study are that Ivermectin is not a treatment for Covid 19 and thus should not be used.
World Health Organization has not approved Ivermectin against Covid 19
After analyzing the randomized clinical trial results and other related studies, the World Health Organization evaluated that still there is a high level of uncertainty regarding the safety and harmfulness of Ivermectin for the treatment of Covid 19.
In some clinical trials, the uncertainty is due to the high risk of bias and imprecision. The randomized clinical trial comprised many small trials with fewer patients registered and fewer events recorded.
WHO believes that more randomized Clinical trials and Ivermectin trials need to be done with higher quality evidence to precisely determine if Ivermectin is a successful treatment of Covid 19.
Adverse events you may experience if you use Ivermectin for coronavirus disease
Medical experts suggest this antiparasitic parasitic drug shouldn’t be taken for the treatment of COVID-19. It may cause some toxicity, adverse events, and serious illness if you use it without medical supervision and clinical characterization.
However, some people have become so sure that ivermectin treatment of covid 19 is an inexpensive and readily available treatment, so they continue to use Ivermectin against medical advice and reporting trials.
Some patients have consumed possibly toxic doses of the Ivermectin drug that are meant to be injected in or poured on large animals such as cows, sheep, or horses. Many of those patients with covid 19 experience serious illness and are called poison control centers.
CDC reported that a few people have attempted to cure COVID by drinking the animal Ivermectin meant to be injected into cattle. They came up with adverse events such as confusion, drowsiness, hallucinations, tremors, and shortness of breath.
Concluding words
Undeniably, Ivermectin works effectively against parasitic infections and many other conditions it is meant for and approved by FDA and WHO.
FDA-approved drug Ivermectin is available as an Oral and topical treatment, both types of medication are safe and valuable at standard dosage levels.
Some clinical trials have been done on people in order to test how well Ivermectin medication performs against Covid 19. Currently, there is very low certainty evidence about Ivermectin against Covid 19 and more studies are required.
In the subgroup analyses, in outpatients who had been diagnosed with Covid 19 earlier, the outcome measures demonstrated more emergency visits, resulting in symptom onset and a high risk of recurrent infections.
As the continuous outcomes suggested, Food and Drug Administration has not approved Ivermectin to treat Covid 19 patients. It should be only used for Covid 19 treatment in a research setting for a clinical trial.
It is not suggested to use Ivermectin intended for animals as a treatment for covid 19 neither in animals nor in humans.
Humans should not consume ivermectin intended for animal use. Animal Ivermectin medication is formulated particularly to treat large animals containing higher levels of Ivermectin than Ivermectin for humans.
