“At some point it will become a waste of resources to continue studying an unpromising approach” – For all but the dead-enders, that time is now.
Cow De-wormer didn’t work on COVID-19
The clinical trial, which began in 2020, analyzed more than 1,300 patients in Brazil who were infected with the coronavirus. Half were given ivermectin and half a placebo in the randomized, double-blind study meaning neither doctors nor trial participants knew what a patient received.
The results confirmed what U.S. health officials have long stressed: Ivermectin did nothing to aid those sickened with the virus or reduce the risk of ending up in the hospital.
“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,” researchers wrote Wednesday.
The researchers zeroed in on different groups of volunteers to see if they experienced benefits that others didn’t. For example, it might be possible that ivermectin only worked if taken early in an infection. But volunteers who took ivermectin in the first three days after the onset of Covid symptoms turned out to have worse outcomes than did those in the placebo group.
Dr. Hill was impressed with the results. “They have run a high-quality, placebo-controlled trial,” he said. He also expressed impatience with the New England Journal of Medicine for taking months to publish the results: “I don’t understand the delay with this trial from NEJM.”
New England Journal of Medicine
Spoiler alert:
CONCLUSIONS
“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.
“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.
✱The 2 bright spots from the study – if you and/or your cow has worms, ivermectin will rid you of them.
✱Researchers found promising evidence that an antidepressant drug called fluvoxamine reduced the need for hospitalization by one-third.
