{"id":178292,"date":"2021-10-21T06:56:35","date_gmt":"2021-10-21T10:56:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=178292"},"modified":"2021-10-19T14:24:12","modified_gmt":"2021-10-19T18:24:12","slug":"ivermectin-is-a-nobel-prize-winning-wonder-drug-but-not-for-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2021\/10\/ivermectin-is-a-nobel-prize-winning-wonder-drug-but-not-for-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Ivermectin is a Nobel Prize-Winning Wonder Drug – But Not for COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ivermectin is an over 30-year-old\u00a0wonder drug<\/a>\u00a0that treats life- and sight-threatening parasitic infections. Its lasting influence on global health has been so profound that two of the key researchers in its discovery and development won the\u00a0Nobel Prize in 2015<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been an\u00a0infectious disease pharmacist<\/a>\u00a0for over 25 years. I\u2019ve also managed patients who delayed proper treatment for their severe COVID-19 infections because they thought ivermectin could cure them.<\/p>\n

Although ivermectin has been a game-changer for people with certain infectious diseases, it isn\u2019t going to save patients from COVID-19 infection. In fact, it could cost them their lives.<\/p>\n

Let me tell you a short story about the history of ivermectin.<\/p>\n

Developing Ivermectin for Animal Use<\/strong><\/p>\n

Ivermectin was first identified in the 1970s during a\u00a0veterinary drug screening project<\/a>\u00a0at Merck Pharmaceuticals. Researchers focused on discovering chemicals that could potentially treat parasitic infections in animals. Common parasites include nematodes, such as flatworms and roundworms, and arthropods, such as fleas and lice. All of these infectious organisms are quite different from viruses.<\/p>\n

Merck partnered with the Kitasato Institute, a medical research facility in Japan. Satoshi Omura and his team isolated a group of chemicals called avermectin from bacteria found in a\u00a0single soil sample near a Japanese golf course<\/a>. To my knowledge, avermectin has yet to be found in any other soil sample in the world.<\/p>\n

Research on avermectin continued for approximately five years. Soon, Merck and the Kitasato Institute developed a\u00a0less toxic form<\/a>\u00a0they named ivermectin. It was approved in 1981 for commercial use in veterinary medicine for\u00a0parasitic infections in livestock and domestic pets<\/a>\u00a0with the brand name Mectizan.<\/p>\n

Developing Ivermectin for Human Use<\/strong><\/p>\n

Early experiments<\/a>\u00a0by William Campbell and his team from Merck discovered that the drug also worked against a human parasite that causes an infection called river blindness.<\/p>\n

River blindness, also known as onchocerciasis<\/a>, is the\u00a0second leading cause<\/a>\u00a0of preventable blindness in the world. It is transmitted to humans from blackflies carrying the parasitic worm\u00a0Onchocerca volvulus<\/em>\u00a0and occurs predominantly in Africa.<\/p>\n

Ivermectin underwent trials to treat river blindness in 1982 and was approved in 1987. It has since been\u00a0distributed free of charge<\/a>\u00a0through the Mectizan Donation Program to dozens of countries. Thanks to ivermectin, river blindness has been\u00a0essentially eliminated in 11 Latin American countries<\/a>, preventing approximately\u00a0600,000 cases of blindness<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These two decades of extensive work to discover, develop and distribute ivermectin helped to significantly reduce human suffering from river blindness. It\u2019s these efforts that were recognized by the\u00a02015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine<\/a>, awarded to both William Campbell and Satoshi Omura for their leadership on this groundbreaking research.<\/p>\n

Repurposing Drugs for Other Uses<\/strong><\/p>\n

Infectious disease researchers frequently attempt to\u00a0repurpose antimicrobials and other medications<\/a>\u00a0to treat infections. Drug repurposing is attractive because the approval process can happen more quickly and at a lower cost since nearly all of the basic research has already been completed.<\/p>\n

In the years since it was approved to treat river blindness, ivermectin was also shown to be highly effective against other parasitic infections. This includes\u00a0strongyloidiasis<\/a>, an intestinal roundworm infection that affects an estimated\u00a030 to 100 million people worldwide<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Another example is amphotericin B, originally approved to treat human\u00a0yeast and mold infections<\/a>. Researchers discovered it can also be an effective treatment for severe forms of\u00a0leishmaniasis<\/a>, a parasitic infection prevalent in tropical and subtropical countries.<\/p>\n

Likewise, doxycycline is an antibiotic used for a wide variety of human bacterial infections such as\u00a0pneumonia and Lyme disease<\/a>. It was later found to also be\u00a0highly effective<\/a>\u00a0in preventing and treating\u00a0malaria<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Repurposing Drugs for COVID-19<\/strong><\/p>\n

Not every attempt at repurposing a drug works as hoped, however.<\/p>\n

At the start of the pandemic, scientists and doctors tried to find\u00a0inexpensive medications to repurpose<\/a>\u00a0for the treatment and prevention of COVID-19. Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were two of those drugs. They were chosen because of possible antiviral effects documented in\u00a0laboratory studies<\/a>\u00a0and limited\u00a0anecdotal case reports<\/a>\u00a0from the first COVID-19 outbreaks in China. However,\u00a0large clinical studies<\/a>\u00a0of these drugs to treat COVID-19 did not translate to any meaningful benefits. This was partly due to the\u00a0serious toxic effects<\/a>\u00a0patients experienced before the drugs reached a high enough dose to inhibit or kill the virus.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately,\u00a0lessons from these failed attempts<\/a>\u00a0have not been applied to ivermectin. The false hope around using ivermectin to treat COVID-19 originated from an\u00a0April 2020 laboratory study<\/a>\u00a0in Australia. Although the results from this study were\u00a0widely circulated<\/a>,\u00a0I immediately had serious doubts<\/a>. The concentration of ivermectin they tested was 20 to 2,000 times higher than the standard dosages used to treat human parasitic infections. Indeed, many other pharmaceutical experts\u00a0confirmed<\/a>\u00a0my\u00a0initial<\/a>\u00a0concerns<\/a>\u00a0within a month of the paper\u2019s publication. Such high concentrations of the drug could be significantly toxic.<\/p>\n

Another commonly cited paper on ivermectin\u2019s purported effects against COVID-19 was\u00a0withdrawn in July 2021<\/a>\u00a0after scientists\u00a0found serious flaws<\/a>\u00a0with the study. These flaws ranged from incorrect statistical analyses to discrepancies between collected data and published results to duplicated patient records and the inclusion of study subjects who died before even entering the study. Even more concerning,\u00a0at least two<\/a>\u00a0other\u00a0oft-cited studies<\/a>\u00a0have raised significant concerns about\u00a0scientific fraud<\/a>.<\/p>\n

At the time of this writing, two\u00a0large randomized<\/a>\u00a0clinical trials<\/a>\u00a0both showed no significant benefit from the use of ivermectin for COVID-19. Reputable national and international health care organizations, including the\u00a0World Health Organization<\/a>, the\u00a0Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, the\u00a0National Institutes of Health<\/a>, the\u00a0Food and Drug Administration<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0Infectious Diseases Society of America<\/a>, unanimously recommend against the use of ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19 unless in the context of a clinical trial.<\/p>\n

Consequences of Using Ivermectin for COVID-19<\/strong><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, many\u00a0organizations with dubious intentions<\/a>\u00a0have continued to promote unsubstantiated use of invermectin for COVID-19. This has led to a dramatic rise in\u00a0ivermectin prescriptions<\/a>\u00a0and a\u00a0flood of calls<\/a>\u00a0to U.S. poison control centers for\u00a0ivermectin overdoses<\/a>. Many calls were due to ingestion of large amounts of veterinary products containing ivermectin \u2013 two\u00a0deaths linked to ivermectin overdose<\/a>\u00a0were reported in September 2021.<\/p>\n

Ivermectin, when used correctly, has prevented millions of potentially fatal and debilitating infectious diseases. It\u2019s meant to be prescribed only to treat infections caused by parasites. It\u2019s not meant to be prescribed by parasites looking to\u00a0extract money<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0desperate people<\/a>\u00a0during a pandemic. It\u2019s my sincere hope that this unfortunate and tragic chapter in the otherwise incredible story of a lifesaving medication will come to a quick end.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Originally published in The Conversation<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although ivermectin has been a game-changer for people with certain infectious diseases, it isn\u2019t going to save patients from COVID-19 infection<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":178293,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2213,2231,1864,2235],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1902],"class_list":["post-178292","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coronavirus","category-health-well-being","category-pharm","category-today-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-11 18:26:13","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":178294,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178292\/revisions\/178294"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/178293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178292"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=178292"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=178292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}