9 ms·
Ivermectin Prophylaxis Used for Covid-19 (Peer-Reviewed)
- johng 5y agoThese seems like a pretty thorough study... is it OK for people to talk about Ivermectin now or are they still going to censor and ban accounts?
- theknocker 5y ago
- threeseed 5y agoMany of those that I saw banned were for those recommending taking ivermectin. Nobody should take anything without discussing it with their doctor.
- josephcsible 5y agoDoes "anything" include the COVID vaccines?
- coding123 5y agoWell, I don't think HN will ban accounts for that. They ban accounts for being mean or starting flamewars. Being republican is NOT a reason for bans here.
- hunter2_ 5y agoGenuinely curious why alignment with this drug is so republican. Seems like the kind of thing that ought to be bipartisan if it's arguably progressive.
- dekhn 5y agothe alignment is not "republican", it's "ignorant". my relatives who are well educated doctors ("we voted for trump because taxes") don't believe this; they got vaccinated (and kept their mouths shut about it) like the majority of other well-off republicans.
- supperburg 5y ago
- mullingitover 5y agoWhat ideas in particular have you found are unfairly flagged to oblivion on HN?
- supperburg 5y agoWhy should I tell you when it would be flagged immediately and nobody would see it anyway?
- mullingitover 5y agoSomething tells me that these ideas aren't legitimately debatable conservative ideas.
- coding123 5y agoI post republican views all the time and have been moderated very rarely.
- s9w 5y ago
- noja 5y agoIs this the "if the subject is suffering from worms, then treating the worms allows them to fight the virus" result? (So not relevant in the US)
- JohnTHaller 5y agoYes. It took place in a city in southern Brazil where worms are endemic. It's exactly what we already knew and not relevant in the US.
- whiskeyRanger 5y ago> SIQ™ is a predictive measure of scientific quality. > How can I improve my article's SIQ™? > Telling your friends, colleagues and advisors to review the article on Cureus > Cureus offers a social media promotional add-on, or boost, for eligible published articles at an additional cost. So this site is like PubMed but with payola?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rsfern 5y agoFor context, this journal uses crowd sourced open peer review, which is an interesting concept. There’s one review, and it’s (IMO) not substantive. I would treat this as a preprint basically (not that you shouldn’t read peer reviewed studies critically either)
- mullingitover 5y ago> not that you shouldn’t read peer reviewed studies critically either Can't emphasize this enough. The MMR autism fraud paper that started the anti-vaccine industry was peer reviewed in the Lancet. It's unfortunate that the critical thinking skills needed to know good research from bad aren't drilled into us as part of the core curriculum for every high school student.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cosmotic 5y agoThis may look and smell like a peer reviewed study, but I cannot find any reliability rankings for the journal 'Cureus'. Wikipedia article on Cureus is brief and it appears they allow anyone to publish. I would take this article with a few large grains of salt.
- sdeframond 5y agoCould you explain what kind of reliability ranking you are referring to ? Is there a "standard" or something ? How does it work ?
- cosmotic 5y agoThere are a a few: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_ranking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_ranking
- JohnTHaller 5y agoParasites are a comorbidity of Covid-19. Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic. You'll slightly improve your chances against Covid-19 by treating the parasites with Ivermectin so your body doesn't have to fight those, too. Parasites are endemic in Brazil in the South where Itajaí is located and Ivermectin is in heavy usage pre-pandemic as a result. We already knew this. This doesn't apply outside areas with endemic parasites. It doesn't apply here in the US.
- Grismar 5y agoScience on this is great. However, don't parrot this to your friends until you see it replicated somewhere else (preferably somewhere not governed by ivermectin-peddling populists) and confirmed in a double-blind random-controlled trial (which this doesn't even get close to). After all, no reason to hold this stuff to a lower standard than the anyone want to hold the vaccines to (regardless of whether they realise these standards were already met there).
- josephcsible 5y ago> no reason to hold this stuff to a lower standard than the anyone want to hold the vaccines to There absolutely is such a reason: the standard for things that people are required to take should be way, way higher than the standard for things that people are merely allowed to take.
- rootusrootus 5y agoMakes sense in Brazil, but is it applicable to the US or other Western nations?
- threeseed 5y agoNot when we have extremely safe, highly effective vaccines. But in places where they aren't available it could be interesting especially if Omicron is the dominant variant and reducing transmission isn't of much use (which Ivermectin doesn't help with).
- ncmncm 5y agoPeople in those places should be treating their parasite infections anyway. We already knew they would be the healthier for it. But they aren't, because they can't afford it.
- JohnTHaller 5y agoNope. Worms are not endemic here, so Ivermectin has no impact on Covid-19 outcomes. It has a slight effect in this area of Brazil where worms are endemic.
- 7174n6 5y ago
- yonaguska 5y ago
- supperburg 5y ago
- goda90 5y agoPre-infection prophylaxis is not the same as treatment for infection. That's where a large number of people had things wrong.
- threeseed 5y agoWhy would they apologise ? People were literally taking the horse de-wormer formulations because they couldn't buy it legally.
- kaczordon 5y agoSource? No one was taking horse de-wormer that I’m aware of. It was a fake story propagated by the rolling stone magazine. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/09/15/fact-check-oklahoma-hospitals-not-backed-up-ivermectin-cases/8271014002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/09/15/fac...
- mike_d 5y agoI spend a decent amount of time monitoring ultra right forums. People were absolutely claiming to be taking horse dewormer, discussing where to find it and how to convince feed store employees they had livestock, and trading it.
- tinus_hn 5y agoInteresting. It’s not double blind and I’m not sure how practical this is but it does cast a lot of doubt on the conclusion that ivermectin doesn’t do anything unless the dose is lethal.
- ncmncm 5y agoIvermectin affects parasite load, and parasite load affects outcomes of acute respiratory infection. The effect size is smaller than from wearing a good mask.
- supperburg 5y agoParasites double your chances of getting severe Covid? Shouldn’t people be taking it anyway then, as well as wearing a mask?
- lambdaba 5y agoRight? Ivermectin is reportedly extremely safe at normal doses, and parasites are an issue everywhere I would think, to an extent. Why not advocate for screening for parasites if getting rid of them has such a dramatic effect?
- ncmncm 5y agoThey do screen for parasites in areas where parasites are a problem, principally the tropics. People who live there live with the parasites because they cannot afford treatment.
- tinus_hn 5y agoThis is a completely nonsensical dismissal unless you want to claim the outcome for people who actually get ill is different for those who wore masks versus those who didn’t. And be sure to keep in mind that the vast majority of infections occur at home where I sincerely doubt people are wearing masks.
- ncmncm 5y agoIn interpreting this result, one should keep in mind that an active parasite infection produces worse results for respiratory infections of all kinds. Taking ivermectin reduces parasite load. The size and location of the study suggests that reporting of COVID-19 infections was by presentation, meaning asymptomatic or minimal infections were probably not counted. tl;dr: These results will probably not translate well to places without pervasive parasite infestation. Wearing an N95 mask has a much larger protective effect than taking ivermectin, in any case, even there.
- lambdaba 5y agoI've seen other similar results, and I don't share this skepticism. I can't find the exact study, but here's one on hospital staff in Argentina: https://www.cureus.com/articles/64807-prophylactic-role-of-ivermectin-in-severe-acute-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-2-infection-among-healthcare-workers https://www.cureus.com/articles/64807-prophylactic-role-of-i... I just don't see how parasites would explain all these results. I do see how monetary incentives would play into maligning them though.
- gus_massa 5y agoNote that the original article and the article you posted are not randomized controlled trails. Does the people that accept to take Ivermectin more cautious than the people that don't? Does young people more likely to try? There are too many variables and it's just too hard to know without a RCT. Also, the problem with these types of studies is that bad outcomes are sometimes not published. Nobody want to write an article with the title "We used Ivermectin and we killed an additional statistical significant number of coworkers" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporting_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporting_bias For a RCT it's necessary more paperwork and authorizations and ideally preregistering. So that increase the chance of that they must write the final paper. Also, as the PG noted the "peer review" of this site is not the traditional peer review of a normal journal. For example, the title says "Observational Study of 223,128 Subjects" but later it says "a total of 159,561 subjects were included in the analysis". The main part of the difference is that they report in the title the total number of inhabitants, but for the analysis they use only the ones that have more than 18 years old. It's not a smoking gun, but at least it's a small red flag.
- rajangdavis 5y agoWhy did this get flagged? It's pretty measured in it's findings: These results indicate that medical-based optional prescription and citywide covered ivermectin can have a positive impact on the healthcare system. However, the present results do not provide sufficient support for the hypothesis that ivermectin could be an alternative to COVID-19 vaccines
- anagram666 5y agoThis is an observational study, not strong enough to make any conclusions; The determination if a patient had taken ivermectin was self-reporting. There is no control of the dosage and how much time the patients took ivermectin before getting covid. This is at best an indication of the need for better studies about the subject, but considering that Brazil's president is rabid pro-ivermectin and this was made in a medium city in a region favorable at the president, take this with a grain of salt.
- JohnTHaller 5y agoAdditionally, it was done in southern Brazil where worms are endemic. Being infected with worms is a known comorbidity of Covid-19. Treating the worms with Ivermectin has been shown to have a small improvement in chance of death from Covid-19. This doesn't apply to the US, of course.
- ipspam 5y agoWe are two years into a pandemic. There isn't coming an answer to ivermectin. There should have been an answer 18 months ago, but the sycophantic vaccine pushers have done everything they can not to discredit ivermectin, but to simply say there isn't enough evidence to prove its effectiveness. Also, the only way to do this is to claim massive widescale multi-country research fraud. I don't have a position on ivermectin, but it's pretty clear that any actual pre-treatmwent repurposing of drugs for any future pandemic should be the tip of the spear, but will be oppressed, underfunded, attacked, false-flagged, strawmanned, degraded, and doctor prescribers attacked. This is totally, totally backwards. Even at $100,000,000 a clinical trial, funding 100 drugs with repurpose potential should have been step 1.
- anagram666 5y agoSorry to say, but the vaccine is a better option to prevent covid, even considering this study. You can take ivermectin if you use the normal dosage, it is not harmful and may be helpful. But a lot of people is promoting ivermectin instead of the vaccine or using a higher dosage and this is causing a lot of preventable deaths.
- b0sk 5y agoThe supposed “hackers” keep pushing these pseudo scientific garbage in Hacker News for some reason
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SteveEM 5y agoThese are the issues that limit ability to draw conclusions in this study: No pre-registration, No randomization, No blinding, No allocation concealment, No idea who did/did not fill prescriptions, Prescription writing was based on "judgement"?!, No uniform follow up, No idea who was followed up or lost to follow up
- SteveEM 5y agoThese authors have had one article retracted by the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine and another refuted by American Journal of Therapeutics. https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2022/02000/Meta_Analyses_Do_Not_Establish_Improved_Mortality.11.aspx https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2022/...
- LearnerHerzog 5y agoI heard those researchers drank horse refresher (water). Can we really trust people putting horse refresher in their bodies?