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Ask An Entomologist Profile picture
@BugQuestions
Aug 22, 2021 • 10 tweets • 5 min read • Read on X
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Why are people poisoning themselves with horse dewormer to treat COVID-19?

Let's explore ivermectin in this week's #DeepDive
Ivermectin is a medication which is perscribed to combat parasites.

It jams itself into chloride channels, permanently turning the nerves off.

It can't do that to people, so it has a pretty good safety profile if you stick to the correct doses.
Okay, but viruses don't have nerves.

So why would an insecticide work on a virus?

It does something else, too. It blocks the import of proteins into the nucleus.

Kind of.

dicyt.uto.edu.bo/observatorio/w…
See, once we get outside of a petri dish, the antiviral properties of ivermectin become a bit questionable.

Sometimes, it works in mice, sometimes it doesn't. Bodies are a lot more complicated than petri dishes.

XKCD
bit.ly/3zlEfju
go.nature.com/3kjQ9EB
The other problem, is that for the medicine to reach the levels needed to treat COVID-19, you need a really high dose.

Like, well over 10x what's currently given to people.

ascpt.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10…
So there's SOME evidence it works, at least. In animal models. And in cells.

The big paper which set all of this off was a well-performed paper looking at the drug in cell cultures.

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
This paper set off a lot of clinical trials, many with varying quality, different confounding factors...it's just hard to parse so many trials run so differently on the fly.

I'm not a doctor, so I'm going to refer to BMJ here:

ebm.bmj.com/content/early/…
Ultimately, though, it looks like it has some weak effects. Weak, but positive.

So maybe if we find the right dosing regime.
The problem, however, is that a lot of this is based on preprints.

...and a lot of this data just isn't quality data.

One paper that's been widely cited in online spheres relied on a withdrawn paper for 15% of its effect size.

nature.com/articles/d4158…
So that's where we are on ivermectin. It's a big "maybe" with a lot of legitimate questions about whether it works...which it very likely might not based on how it's metabolized in people.

Vaccines DO work, so if you can, get vaccinated.

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More from @BugQuestions

Ask An Entomologist Profile picture
Nov 6
For tonight's #DeepDive, let's talk about this meme popularized by folks like Casual Geographic and Wild Green memes.

Once you dig into the biology of poisons, it begins to fall apart pretty quickly.

More importantly, it's actually dangerous to people who work with animals. Image
First, we really need to get into the definitions here because 'what is a venom' has been the subject of considerable debate.

One definition from the lit:

Arbuckle, K. (2017). Evolutionary context of venom in animals. Evolution of venomous animals and their toxins, 24, 3-31. Image
Note the use of the word 'toxin' here. A toxin generally refers to a poison produced by a biological organism, with the definition of poison being a substance which causes harm in a biological system.

I'm not really into grammatical arguments, but wanted to address it. Image
Read 15 tweets
Ask An Entomologist Profile picture
May 6, 2021
In 1875, a series of locust swarms the size of California ripped through the Western frontier

Blotting out the sun and causing the modern equivalent of $4 billion in damages, major famines followed in their wake

In 1902, just 25 years later, the species went extinct

#DeepDive
The grasshopper, the Rocky Mountian locust, was once the most numerous animal on the planet.

So numerous, that entomologists didn't bother to collect them.

The only specimens came from a glacier in Montana, which has since melted b/c global warming

formontana.net/grasshopper.ht…
The Rocky Mountain Locust, Melanoplus spreta, once had a range which covered almost the entirety of the US.

It was a highly mobile species which had been collected from Nevada all the way to St. Louis.

It bred mostly in the Rocky Mountain river basin.
Read 20 tweets
Ask An Entomologist Profile picture
May 5, 2021
So, I've been thinking about how to properly respond to this...and there's really no way to do that because we will never be able to take our ecosystems from Earth to other planets.

What Musk proposes here is (as @Myrmecos pointed out) simply impossible.
Let's say, for funsies, that we're able to build some kind of ark.

Well, that ark will only hold the critters humans know about. Maybe the occasional weirdo hanging out on someone else, but heavy bias.
On any practical level, we cannot create an ecosystem.

Yes, ecospheres are a thing. However, it's an ecosystem which supports a handful of species.

No real food webs.
Read 11 tweets
Ask An Entomologist Profile picture
Jun 9, 2020
When the first white settlers arrived in Montana, the native Salish people warned them to not settle the West side of the Bitterroot River.

Ignoring these warnings, a small group of people colonized that side of the river.

Three quarters-75%-died of a mysterious disease. Image
The Bitterroot river carves out a 75 mile canyon in Western Montana.

It's not deep at all, averaging only about 3 feet. Animals and humans cross it very easily, and it's not really a barrier to any kind of travel.

The Salish believed evil spirits lived in the area.
Saint Mary's mission, founded in 1841, was the first permanent European settlement in Montana.

The European settlers weren't very nice to the natives, and the poor relationship caused the mission to close.
Read 17 tweets
Ask An Entomologist Profile picture
Dec 31, 2018
For our last #DeepDive of 2018, let's talk about a mosquito that you'll be hearing a lot about in 2019.

Aedes aegypti is one of the most important disease vectors in the world.

So...what makes it a good vector, and why is it found worldwide?
Ae. aegypti is a mosquito that's originally from sub-Saharan Africa, adapted to living in the holes in trees.

This genus has a unique egg laying behavior. They lay their eggs on surfaces above water, and those eggs are dormant until the hole fills up.

flic.kr/p/8gXkQf
In it's home range, there are two color forms.

One color form is dark, and doesn't hang out around people.

The second is lighter colored, and pretty much specifically feeds on people.

It's that second one which more or less took over the world.
Read 12 tweets
Ask An Entomologist Profile picture
Dec 30, 2018
This question, inspired by our cricket packaging thread, is another excellent question.

Even if we're not releasing mosquitoes, why do we need to breed them in captivity?

There's a few reasons...
The most important is a reference strain. Lots of mosquitoes were being bred in labs before pesticides were introduced, so we *know* they're not resistant to them.

If we're curious about a modern population, we can compare and use them as a standard.
Besides reference strains for pesticides, we know that the lab reference strains can transmit most of the 'normal' diseases that Ae. aegypti spread.

However, not all populations of Ae. aegypti spread every disease.

Why is that?

Scientists need to know!

journals.plos.org/plosntds/artic…
Read 5 tweets

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