EARLY IN THE Covid pandemic, some medicines got reputations for potentially being able to treat the virus, even in the absence of evidence. While there are now scientifically-proven drugs used to treat Covid, it’s understandable to still have questions about medications that were once hailed as the next big thing in treatment for the virus when research was in its infancy. Ivermectin is one of them.
If you remember, ivermectin was promoted by some as a medication that could help treat the virus. One was QAnon supporter Veronica Wolski, who died in 2021 of complications of Covid. Wolski’s supporters accused her medical team of medical malpractice for not giving her ivermectin. Some people were so desperate to get ivermectin that they ordered animal formulations of the drug. That pushed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue a warning in 2020 about the move and its potentially serious complications.
But what is ivermectin and what does the data say about it now? Doctors break it down.
What is ivermectin, again?
IVERMECTIN IS A medication approved by the FDA to treat intestinal strongyloidiasis and onchocerciasis, which are two conditions caused by parasitic worms. Ivermectin is also used in topical form to treat parasites like head lice and for skin conditions like rosacea.
Ivermectin “works by interfering with the nerve and muscle function in parasites,” says Jamie Alan, PhD, an associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University.
For animals, ivermectin is usually used to prevent heartworm. “It’s widely used in animal husbandry,” says Thomas Russo, MD, professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York. “It’s used to cleanse a lot of domesticated and food animals of various parasites.” However, Russo stresses that animal formulations of ivermectin are different from ones used for people.
Why did people think that ivermectin would help with Covid?
THERE WAS ONE lab study on ivermectin’s potential impact on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid. That study, which was published in the journal Antiviral Research in 2020, found that ivermectin caused a 5,000-fold reduction in SARS-CoV-2 over 48 hours in a cell culture. As a result, the researchers wrote that ivermectin “has a potential for repurposing” the drug to treat Covid.
But that was in a lab study on cells—not on humans, Russo points out. That particular study also used really high doses of ivermectin that can be difficult to achieve in people, because of how much of the drug can actually be absorbed in the body, he says.
Ultimately, Russo says that the chatter around ivermectin’s impact on Covid was largely “speculation.”
What does the data say?
RESEARCH ON HUMANS never found that ivermectin was a good treatment for Covid. The FDA has made it clear that “currently available clinical trial data do not demonstrate that ivermectin is effective against Covid 19 in humans.”
A large clinical trial published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 2022 had more than 3,500 people who were infected with Covid take either ivermectin or a placebo. The researchers discovered that people in the ivermectin group did not have lower odds of being hospitalized due to Covid. It also didn’t lower their risk of going to the ER with Covid.
A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study published in JAMA in 2023 also found that ivermectin didn’t help treat the virus. For the study, more than 1,400 adults with Covid were either given ivermectin or a placebo. The researchers discovered that people got better in both groups around the same time. “These findings do not support the use of ivermectin among outpatients with Covid-19,” the researchers concluded.
“Evidence suggests that ivermectin is not effective in treating Covid,” Alan says.
Alan points out that there is the potential for “very significant side effects” of taking ivermectin when you don’t need it, including rapid heart rate, swelling of the face, swelling of feet, low blood pressure, dizziness, diarrhea, nausea, decreased white blood cell counts, and hepatitis.
There are three drugs that are proven to treat Covid—nirmatrelvir/ritonavir (Paxlovid), remdesivir (Veklury), and molnupiravir (Lagevrio), Russo says. If you get infected with Covid and are at a high risk for serious complications of the virus, he recommends contacting your doctor about next steps.
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