"There's enough behind ivermectin for COVID-19 that there must be something there"
This is a point that I find fascinating 🧵
This is a point that I find fascinating 🧵
See, thing is, most of the studies that supported the idea that there is a large benefit for ivermectin appear to be either fraudulent or so poorly conducted that they might as well be fake
On the other hand, the only large, well conducted trials seem to find either no benefit or at best quite a modest one
Indeed, if you remove just two trials from your analysis - Elgazzar and Niaee - there is not a single RCT that has found a benefit for mortality, and on aggregate the result is pretty solidly 🤷♂️🤷♂️
What then separates ivermectin from other repurposed drugs? Popularity?
Anyway, this doesn't mean that we should stop the ongoing large trials into ivermectin, but I do think it's an interesting point worth considering. Take away the fraud, rewind to the actual evidence, and what remains?
What got me thinking about all of this is that we excluded lopinavir/ritonavir as a treatment based on not that much more null evidence than we now have for ivermectin. We need to finish the bigger trials, for many reasons, but still interesting
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