Widely Used in India, WHO Recommends Ivermectin Only For Clinical Trials, Not Treatment of Covid

The World Health Organization on Tuesday recommended against the general use of ‘Ivermectin’ – a widely used drug in India for treating parasitic infections – for treatment of COVID-19 patients.

A similar warning has also been issued by German healthcare and life sciences giant Merck. Merck said its scientists continue to “carefully examine findings of all available and emerging studies of ‘ivermectin’ for treatment of COVID-19”.

WHO said Ivermectin is to be used only as part of clinical trials till enough data is collected on its utility.

This comes a day after American Journal of Therapeutics in its May-June issue said regular use of the oral antiparasitic drug ivermectin may significantly reduce the risk of contracting covid-19.

The research in American Journal of Therapeutics is the most comprehensive review of the available data on ivermectin taken from clinical, in vitro, animal, and real-world studies, its authors said.

“We conducted the most comprehensive review of the available data on ivermectin,” said Pierre Kory, president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), a group of medical and scientific experts, which led the study.

“We applied the gold standard to qualify the data reviewed before concluding that ivermectin can end this pandemic,” Kory said in a statement.

A focus of the study was on the 27 controlled trials available in January 2021, 15 of which were randomised controlled trials (RCT”s).

The authors found large, statistically significant reduction in mortality, time to recovery and viral clearance in COVID-19 patients treated with ivermectin.

To evaluate the efficacy of ivermectin in preventing COVID-19, three RCT”s and five observational controlled trials including almost 2,500 patients were analysed.

All studies reported that ivermectin significantly reduces the risk of contracting COVID-19 when used regularly, the authors said.

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