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Ivermectin is no more effective than placebo in reducing the severity of COVID-19 among newly diagnosed patients, according to the largest trial to date that has investigated this question.
Treatment with ivermectin failed to reduce hospital admissions for worsening COVID-19 and failed to shorten the time that patients with COVID-19 stayed as outpatients in the emergency room for observation.
"The main take-home [message] is ivermectin is not a drug that should be widely used for COVID," senior author Edward J. Mills, PhD, professor of health research methods, evidence, and impact at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, told Medscape Medical News.
"There were no ill effects that we noticed, and it's generally a very safe drug. And we cannot rule out that there's a small treatment effect, but if there is, it's a small treatment effect, and there are other options out there now that have larger benefits," Mills said.
The findings from the trial, which included 3515 patients from Brazil, were published March 30 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Adaptive Platform Trial
Ivermectin, which is typically used as an antiparasitic agent, has been much in the news recently, and one of the reasons is that the repurposing of existing medicines that are widely available and reasonably safe has assumed greater importance with the emergence of COVID-19.
