from The Epoch Times:
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says a drug called ivermectin does not work against COVID-19 but links to studies that show it does, an Epoch Times review has found.
The FDA’s website states, “Currently available data do not show ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.”
But half of the studies to which the FDA points support using ivermectin against COVID-19, according to the review.
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The papers cut against the drug agency’s repeated exhortations for people not to take ivermectin for COVID-19. In Twitter posts, public statements, and emails, FDA officials have repeatedly warned against ivermectin. Some of those statements triggered a lawsuit from doctors who say the agency’s role is to approve drugs, not to issue recommendations. The suit was dismissed this week.
Dr. Pierre Kory, who frequently prescribes ivermectin for COVID-19 and co-authored a meta-analysis that concluded the drug is effective against the illness, told The Epoch Times that the government’s position on ivermectin “is one of the most glaring examples of the corruption of modern evidence based medicine.”
“There’s one message they want everyone to understand. And that message is that ivermectin doesn’t work,” Kory said. “That’s not a scientific conclusion, that’s theirs. That’s their perverted and distorted interpretation of the data.”
Dr. Janet Woodcock, a top official at the agency who was its commissioner from January 2021 to February 2022, told The Epoch Times via email that “ivermectin has been shown to be ineffective against COVID in large randomized trials.”
Studies
The FDA’s website points to a U.S. National Library of Medicine database of studies analyzing ivermectin against COVID-19. There are 88 studies listed in the database.
Out of studies that are listed, have been completed, and have results reported, half show or indicate ivermectin effectively combats or prevents COVID-19, according to the review by The Epoch Times.
They include papers reporting on results from randomized, controlled trials, which are often offered as the highest level of evidence by U.S. government officials. Such trials feature a group that receives a placebo and a group that receives the drug, randomization into groups, and blinding, or shielding operators and/or patients from the knowledge of which participants are receiving ivermectin.
Among the papers is a randomized, blinded, controlled trial that found people who received ivermectin and doxycycline, an antibiotic, recovered faster from COVID-19 than those who received a placebo.
Bangladeshi researchers reported the results from the trial of 363 participants on May 13, 2021, in the Journal of International Medical Research.
“Patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 infection treated with ivermectin plus doxycycline recovered earlier, were less likely to progress to more serious disease, and were more likely to be COVID-19 negative by RT-PCR on day 14,” they said. PCR has been used to test for COVID-19.
Another paper, published on July 7, 2022, in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, found that that ivermectin decreased the level of COVID-19 and its viability. Israeli researchers in the randomized, controlled, open label trial compared 47 patients who received ivermectin against 42 who received placebos and said that “ivermectin significantly reduced the time of viral shedding and affected viral viability when initiated in the first week after evidence of infection.”
“There were lower viral loads and less viable cultures in the ivermectin group, which shows its anti-SARS-CoV-2 activity,” the researchers said. SARS-CoV-2 is a name for the virus that causes COVID-19.
