From the start, we have supported the government’s view that the response to the COVID-19 pandemic must be based on science. Conversely, this also meant that we have opposed any “miracle cures” that were not grounded in science and solid—and extensive—laboratory-based research.
Last week, The New England Journal of Medicine published the results from a large clinical trial that showed that ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug touted by politicians here and abroad as an alternative treatment for COVID-19, showed no signs of quelling the disease or reducing patients’ risk of hospitalization.
The findings pretty much rule out the drug as a treatment for COVID-19, the study’s authors wrote.
“There’s really no sign of any benefit,” Dr. David Boulware, one of the co-authors and an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota, told The New York Times.
“Now that people can dive into the details and the data, hopefully that will steer the majority of doctors away from ivermectin towards other therapies,” Boulware said.
In the trial, the research team compared more than 1,350 people infected with the coronavirus in Brazil who received either ivermectin or a placebo as treatment.
Between March and August 2021, 679 patients received a daily dose of ivermectin over the course of three days. The researchers found that ivermectin didn’t reduce the risk that people with COVID-19 would be hospitalized or go to an emergency room within 28 days after treatment.
In addition, the researchers looked at particular groups to understand if some patients benefited for some reason, such as taking ivermectin sooner after testing positive for COVID-19. But those who took the drug during the first three days after a positive coronavirus test ended up doing worse than those in the placebo group. The drug also didn’t help patients recover sooner.
The researchers also said they found “no important effects” of treatment with ivermectin on the number of days people spent in the hospital, the number of days hospitalized people needed mechanical ventilation or the risk of death.
The study, the most extensive on ivermectin so far, gives lie to the false promises that some politicians made about its efficacy, absent any scientific basis for giving them. Two of them who are running for office this year, not too long ago led the distribution of the anti-parasitic drug as a COVID-19 treatment against the advice of the Department of Health and the Food and Drug Administration—providing us a solid argument that politics, especially when it is anchored on ignorance, must not be allowed to muddle public health policy.