An anti-parasitic drug that’s usually used to treat head lice ‘could kill off coronavirus in just two days’, scientists have revealed.
The drug, called ivermectin, has shown ‘potential’ in treating COVID-19, and is currently the centre of focus in several coronavirus studies.
Speaking to ABC News, Dr Nirav Shah, an infectious disease specialist at NorthShore University HealthSystem, said: “Finding a safe, affordable, readily available therapy like ivermectin, if it proves effective with rigorous evaluation, has the potential to save countless lives.”
One of the teams looking into the effectiveness of ivermectin is from Melbourne’s Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute.
Dr Kylie Wagstaff, one of the researchers, explained: “We found that even a single dose could essentially remove all viral RNA by 48 hours and that even at 24 hours, there was a really significant reduction in it.”
The team now plans to carry out follow-up studies to determine the correct human dosage.
However, Dr Shah cautioned that while ivermectin has proved effective against coronavirus in lab studies, it may not be as effective when tested in humans.
He explained: “That being said, given there are no proven therapies against Covid-19 to date and we are in the midst of a pandemic, drugs that show promise in early in vitro or observational studies such as ivermectin should be rigorously evaluated to understand safety and effectiveness.”
Meanwhile, another team from the Broward Health Medical Centre in Florida claims to already be treating COVID-19 patients with ivermectin.
Dr Jean-Jacques Rajter said: “If we get to these people early, and what I mean by that is if their oxygen requirements are less than 50 per cent, I’ve had nearly a 100 per cent response rate, they all improve, if they’re on more oxygen than that, then it becomes a little more varied, some people, they don’t respond anymore because they are too far advanced."
Dr Rajter added that he’s currently writing up his findings, but warned that they could take weeks to be published.
He said: “If I wait, every day that goes by is another day when lots and lots of people get very sick, go to ICU, many of them die and that could theoretically even be preventable and that’s why I thought it was so critically important to get this information out there.”
While his initial results are promising, Dr Rajter added that we shouldn’t regard ivermectin as a ‘miracle cure.’
He added: “To me the message remains the same as it’s been all along: social distancing, stay away from people, wear a mask, which I took off for the interview, wash your hands, when you bring something into the home, make sure you sanitize everything, that is really the message."
