The drug ivermectin does not help against Covid-19. This is shown by a study from Brazil that was published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The authors write that the anthelmintic does not reduce the risk of hospital treatment after a coronavirus infection compared to the placebo.
Ivermectin, which can be used in humans against certain roundworms and scabies mites, has gained a certain popularity, most recently among people who doubt or deny the effectiveness and safety of corona vaccinations. They saw the drug as a miracle cure in the pandemic. A run on pharmacies has been reported at times in some countries. The hype was reinforced by dubious websites that referred to supposedly promising results, especially from smaller studies, the quality and general validity of which, according to experts, is sometimes questionable.
In the double-blind study that has now been published, neither doctors nor the patients randomly assigned knew who had received the anthelmintic and who had received a dummy preparation, i.e. a placebo. The more than 3500 participants had an increased risk of a severe course of Covid because of their age or previous illnesses. 679 of them received ivermectin, as many received a placebo, the remaining almost 2160 patients were treated differently.
Ivermectin can be highly toxic
In the study, ivermectin was clinically ineffective in terms of both risk of hospitalization and length of stay in hospital or recovery from infection. »No effect of the drug!«, tweeted Stefan Kluge, the director of the clinic for intensive care at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf. The infection immunologist Leif Erik Sander from the Berlin Charité reacted to the result also on Twitter: “That should be the end of the matter.”