Thread by @GidMK

Some of the ivermectin trials are just...wildly terrible

This study has been cited 23 times. Appears in the Bryant et al and other systematic reviews. And it is just very bad

The study claims to be an RCT comparing ivermectin to a control group for prophylaxis, giving either ivermectin or no prophylaxis at all to contacts of presumed COVID cases

Firstly, the study is published in a journal that has an entire page dedicated to why it's not predatory, which is, uh, not a brilliant sign. Apparently it's not a problem that they were delisted from Pubmed

Journal aside, the study has just so many issues. It claims to be randomized, but has absolutely 0 information about randomization, and seems to explicitly say that there was no allocation concealment which is really something to see

On top of that, the authors say that at a certain point they simply stopped allocating people into the control group, which means that the final study is obviously not randomized and shouldn't be included in any review of RCTs

Now, that's probably enough to ignore the study as evidence, but it's worth noting that this unblinded, uncontrolled cohort study also only assessed the majority of cases using clinical signs (not PCR)

So it's not even a study of ivermectin for COVID-19 precisely, this is a cohort study comparing self-reported symptoms in people who are given ivermectin compared to people who are given nothing

And yet, cited, included in reviews etc