The Truth About Ivermectin

Authored by Marina Zheng via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Ivermectin has been hailed as a “wonder drug” and, according to the UNESCO World Science Report, a critical component of “one of the most triumphant public health campaigns ever waged in the developing world.”

A healthcare worker holds a bottle of ivermectin in Colombia on July 21, 2020. (Luis Robayo/AFP via Getty Images)

However, since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and affiliated health authorities have vociferously recommended against ivermectin as a potential treatment for the virus.

Though the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved ivermectin for human use in treating conditions caused by parasites, it has also insisted that ivermectin “has not been shown to be safe or effective” when it comes to treating COVID-19.

In a social media message that has gone viral, the FDA labeled it as a drug for horses and not fit for human consumption: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

The post made headlines and was one of the FDA’s most successful social media campaigns. Yet, research findings seem to contradict the public health organization’s recommendations.

A growing body of research shows that ivermectin is an essential treatment for COVID-19. Many doctors have praised the drug for its broad yet effective antiparasitic, antiviral, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer, and autophagic properties.

Ivermectin: Antiparasitic Beginnings

Ivermectin made its name through its significant benefits in treating parasitic infections.

In 1973, Satoshi Omura and William C. Campbell, working with the Kitasato Institute in Tokyo, found an unusual type of Streptomyces bacteria in Japanese soil near a golf course.

In laboratory studies, Omura and Campbell discovered that this Streptomyces bacteria could cure mice infected with the roundworm Heligmosomoides polygyrus. Campbell isolated the bacteria’s active compounds, naming them avermectins, and the bacteria was thus called S. avermitilis.

Despite decades of searching worldwide, researchers have yet to find another microorganism that can produce avermectin.

It was changing one of the bonds of avermectin through a chemical process that produced ivermectin, which was proven successful in treating onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis, both of which are debilitating diseases common in the developing world.

A portrait of William Campbell and an illustration describing his work displayed on a screen during a press conference of the 2015 Nobel Medicine Prize. William Campbell and Satoshi Omura won the Nobel Medicine Prize for their discoveries of treatments against parasites—Avermectin, which was modified to Ivermectin. (JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images)

Though its broad antiparasitic functions are not well understood, it is known that ivermectin penetrates parasites’ nervous systems, turning off their neurons’ actions, possibly deactivating and killing them.

As part of a donation campaign launched in 1988 by Merck & Co., Inc., the manufacturer of ivermectin, the drug was used in Africa to treat river blindness. Also called onchocerciasis, river blindness is a tropical disease caused by Onchocerca volvulus worms. It is the second-most common cause worldwide of infectious blindness.

The Onchocerca worms mature in the skin of an infected individual (“the host”). After mating, female worms can release into the host’s skin up to 1,000 microfilariae a day; the female worms live for 10 to 14 years. The presence of these worms can lead to scarring in the tissues and, when microfilariae invade the eye, can cause visual impairment or complete loss of vision.

The World Health Organization estimates that 18 million people are infected globally, and 270,000 have been blinded by onchocerciasis.

When Merck distributed ivermectin in areas hardest hit by the disease, treatment benefited the residents’ overall health and led to economic recovery. Ivermectin replaced previous drugs that had devastating side effects.

Ivermectin proved to be virtually purpose-built to combat Onchocerciasis,” Omura wrote in a study he co-authored in 2011.

Ivermectin has also proven effective against lymphatic filariasis, known as elephantiasis. Parasitic worms transmitted through the bite of an infected mosquito can grow and develop in lymphatic vessels, which regulate the body’s water balance. When certain vessels are blocked, the areas—typically the legs and genitals—can swell, with the legs enlarging to elephant-like stumps.

Worldwide, more than 120 million people are infected, 40 million of whom are seriously incapacitated and disfigured.

The World Health Organization listed ivermectin as an essential drug and has advised many countries to run annual campaigns to rid people of these parasites. Such recommendations are a solid testament to ivermectin’s safety.

For their work, including the discovery of avermectin, in 2015, Omura and Campbell were among three recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

It is an indispensable drug for the underdeveloped world, with about 3.7 billion doses administered as part of global campaigns during the past 30 years. To this day, ivermectin remains a staple drug of tropical areas and an essential drug in treating onchocerciasis, lymphatic filariasis, strongyloidiasis, and scabies.

Ivermectin and COVID-19

Analyses of studies on ivermectin have found it effective as a prevention, a treatment for acute COVID-19, and in advanced stages of infection by the virus.

1. Ivermectin as a Prophylaxis

Prophylaxis intervenes in the first phases of COVID-19 infection, which is mainly asymptomatic, when the virus replicates to increase its viral load—symptom onset occurs after the viral load peaks.

Ivermectin can be effective in the early stages of infection. Outside the cells, ivermectin can attach to parts of the virus, immobilizing it and preventing it from entering and infecting human cells.

Ivermectin can also enter the cell to prevent the virus from replicating. SARS-CoV-2 needs cell replication machinery to make more of the virus; ivermectin attaches and blocks a protein critical to this process, preventing viral production.

Additionally, ivermectin can be absorbed from the skin and stored in fat cells for a long time.

Because it’s lipid soluble, it is stored and slowly released, [so] once you’ve taken a prophylactic dose, and I think it’s like the cumulative dose of about 400mg, that your risk of getting COVID is close to zero and you can actually stop it for a while,” said Dr. Paul Marik, a widely published critical care specialist with 500 peer-reviewed papers to his name, in an interview with The Epoch Times.