Israeli scientist says COVID-19 could be treated for less than $ 1 / day

Professor Eli Schwartz, founder of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Disease in Sheba, conducted a randomized, controlled, double-blind trial from May 15, 2020 to the end of January 2021 to assess the effectiveness of ivermectin in reducing viral shedding. in outpatients with mild to moderate COVID-19.

Ivermectin has been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration since 1987. The drug’s discoverers received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine for its treatment of onchocerciasis, a disease caused by infection with a parasitic roundworm.

Over the years, it has been used for other indications including scabies and head lice. Additionally, over the past decade, several clinical studies have started showing its antiviral activity against viruses ranging from HIV and influenza to Zika and West Nile.

The drug is also extremely economical. A study published in the peer-reviewed American Journal of Therapeutics showed that the cost of ivermectin for other treatments in Bangladesh is around $ 0.60 to $ 1.80 for a five-day course. It costs up to $ 10 a day in Israel, Schwartz said.

Volunteers were tested using a standard nasopharyngeal swab PCR test to assess whether there was a reduction in viral load on day six – day three after stopping treatment. They were swabbed every two days.

Almost 72% of volunteers treated with ivermectin tested negative for the virus on the sixth day. In contrast, only 50% of those who received the placebo tested negative.

FURTHER, the study looked at the viability of the culture, i.e. the degree of contagion of the patients, and found that only 13% of the patients on ivermectin were infectious after six days, compared to 50% of the group. placebo, almost four times more.

“Our study shows primarily that ivermectin has antiviral activity,” said Schwartz. “It also shows that there is an almost 100% chance that a person will be non-infectious in four to six days, which could lead to a shortening of the isolation time for these people. It could have a huge economic and social impact. “

The study appeared on the health research sharing site MedRxiv.

Schwartz said other similar studies – although not all conducted to the same double-blind, placebo-controlled standards as his – have shown a favorable impact of ivermectin treatment.

His study did not prove that ivermectin was effective as a prophylactic, meaning it could prevent disease, he warned, or reduce the chances of hospitalization. However, other studies have shown such evidence, he added.

For example, the study published earlier this year in the American Journal of Therapeutics noted that “a review of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance summarized the results of 27 studies on the effects of ivermectin for prevention and treatment of COVID-19 infection. , concluding that ivermectin “demonstrates a strong signal of therapeutic efficacy” against COVID-19.

“Another recent review found that ivermectin reduced deaths by 75%,” the report says.

BUT IVERMECTINE is not without controversy, and therefore, despite the high levels of coronavirus around the world, neither the FDA nor the World Health Organization have been willing to approve it for use in the drug. fight against the virus.

Professor Ya’acov Nahmias, a researcher at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, questioned the safety of the drug.

“Ivermectin is a chemical therapeutic agent, and it has significant risks associated with it,” he said in a previous interview. “We have to be very careful about using this type of drug to treat a viral disease from which the vast majority of the public will recover even without this treatment.”

During Schwartz’s study, there were no signs of significant side effects in ivermectin users.

Only five patients were referred to hospitals, including four in the placebo arm. A patient on ivermectin went to the hospital to complain of shortness of breath on recruit day. He continued the ivermectin treatment and was returned to the hotel the next day in good condition.

The FDA said on its website that it “has received several reports of patients who required medical support and were hospitalized after self-medicating with ivermectin.”

The “FDA has not approved ivermectin for use in the treatment or prevention of COVID-19 in humans,” he said. “Ivermectin tablets are approved in very specific doses for certain parasitic worms, and there are topical formulations (on the skin) for head lice and skin conditions like rosacea. Ivermectin is not an antiviral (a medicine to treat viruses). Taking large doses of this medicine is dangerous and can cause serious harm.

The World Health Organization has also recommended that the drug not be used except in clinical trials.

IN CONTRAST, Schwartz said he was very disappointed that the WHO had not supported any trials to see if the drug could be viable.

Last month, the University of Oxford announced a large trial on the effectiveness of ivermectin.

Schwartz said he got interested in exploring for ivermectin about a year ago, “when everyone was looking for a new drug” to treat COVID-19, and a lot of effort was being made to assess hydroxychloroquine, so he decided to join the effort.

“Since ivermectin was on my shelf, since we use it for tropical diseases, and there were hints that it might work, I decided to go for it,” he said.

Researchers in other places around the world started studying the drug around the same time. But when they started to see positive results, no one wanted to publish them, Schwartz said.

“There is a lot of opposition,” he said. “We tried to publish it, and it was rejected by three newspapers. No one even wanted to hear about it. You must be wondering why the world is suffering.

“This drug will not bring big economic benefits,” and so Big Pharma does not want to deal with it, he said.

SOME OF THE strongest opposition to ivermectin has come from Merck Co., which manufactured the drug in the 1980s. In a public statement on ivermectin on its website in February, it said: “Scientists at the company continues to carefully review the results of all available and emerging studies on ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 for evidence of efficacy and safety. It is important to note that to date our analysis has not identified any scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from preclinical studies; no significant evidence of clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and a worrying lack of safety data in the majority of studies. “

But Merck hasn’t started any studies on ivermectin.

“You would think that Merck would be happy to hear that ivermectin might be of use to corona patients and try to study it, but they are saying out loud that the drug should not be used,” Schwartz said. “A billion people took it. They gave it to them. It is a real shame. “

And not going ahead with ivermectin could potentially extend the time it takes for the world to be able to live alongside the virus, he said.

“The development of new drugs can take years; therefore, identifying existing drugs that can be reused against COVID-19 [and] which already have a safety profile established over decades of use could play a critical role in suppressing or even ending the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, ”the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Therapeutics. “The use of reused drugs can be particularly important because it can take months, or even years, for a large portion of the world’s population to be immunized, especially among low- to middle-income populations. “