Campaigners for the drug point to a number of scientific studies and often claim this evidence is being ignored or covered up. But a review by a group of independent scientists has cast serious doubt on that body of research.
The BBC can reveal that more than a third of 26 major trials of the drug for use on Covid have serious errors or signs of potential fraud. None of the rest show convincing evidence of ivermectin’s effectiveness.
Dr Kyle Sheldrick, one of the group investigating the studies, said they had not found “a single clinical trial” claiming to show that ivermectin prevented Covid deaths that did not contain “either obvious signs of fabrication or errors so critical they invalidate the study”.
Major problems included:
- The same patient data being used multiple times for supposedly different people
- Evidence that selection of patients for test groups was not random
- Numbers unlikely to occur naturally
- Percentages calculated incorrectly
- Local health bodies unaware of the studies
Lots more where that came from at BBC.
Fact Check
Although the National Institutes of Health counts over 70 studies evaluating the safety and effectiveness of ivermectin to treat or prevent COVID-19 in humans, the FDA says “currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19,” and using the medication for this purpose in humans or animals “can be highly dangerous” in some instances.
Both the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health have not recommended the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 outside of clinical trials, citing insufficient evidence.
In the Together trial, according to the preliminary results presented by Mills, professor of health research methods, evidence and impact at McMaster University in Canada, the study found no indication of benefit on the use of ivermectin — nor with hydroxychloroquine or lopinavir-ritonavir, or metformin. The ivermectin arm had 1,500 patients: 677 of them received a daily dose of the medication, and 678 others were given a placebo, for three days.
