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Related: About this forumWounded Bear
(58,440 posts)magicguido
(6,315 posts)Lonestarblue
(9,880 posts)Fritz Walter
(4,281 posts)I especially like the cautions mentioned in this "ad."
A sudden inability to pronounce Kamala Harris's name; or
A sudden urge to speak to the manager.
bucolic_frolic
(42,677 posts)central scrutinizer
(11,617 posts)If we cant kill off all the living MAGATs we can dramatically slow their increase
jaxexpat
(6,703 posts)keithbvadu2
(36,369 posts)Saw a satirical cartoon that COVID vaccine makes your penis larger.
Aimed at the anti-vax crowd.
TheRickles
(2,000 posts)This 85% sterility headline struck me as unlikely, given that tens of millions of African men (and women) have been taking ivermectin for years to prevent and treat river blindness, and their population growth doesn't seem to have been affected. So I looked into the article that is excerpted in the tweet from Mr. Schwenk.
That study looked at a group of Nigerian men being treated for river blindness; 90% of the potential subjects were disqualified from the study for already having low sperm counts. After Ivermectin treatment, there were small changes (about 10-20%) in several aspects of sperm function in the small sample (N=37), but the study did not analyze the data to see if these changes were statistically significant, or were just random fluctuations.
Since this is a small and very unusual patient sample, with low sperm counts as the norm, no conclusions can realistically be drawn about the impact of ivermectin in otherwise healthy patients.
The money quote about 85% sterility comes from another paper, #6 cited in the above article. However, there is no listing in the archives of the journal that supposedly published this study, the Journal of Biomedical Investigation; the citation (vol 3, #1, p41-43) is to a report about the possible use of an African form of the herb basil to treat infections; it is not a clinical report about Ivermectin.
So its not clear where the 85% sterility data point actually comes from (hopefully someone can track it down), but I dont think it matters anymore. The headline writers and social media types will not be able to resist this one. To be clear, I am not endorsing or rejecting Ivermectin as a treatment for Covid - Im just saying that the sterility story seems to be a misrepresentation that is being misused to suit an agenda, and thats not OK, regardless of how worthy that agenda might be.
bucolic_frolic
(42,677 posts)TheRickles
(2,000 posts)Have you seen anything solid to back it up? I haven't.
Rhiannon12866
(203,036 posts)An elderly gentleman who I've seen at local meetings said that his granddaughters refuse to get the vaccine in case they want to have children someday. :
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,789 posts)infullview
(978 posts)in the company the make Ivermectin.
Bernardo de La Paz
(48,789 posts)colorado_ufo
(5,717 posts)Jon King
(1,910 posts)Lets not have closed minds about the long term use of Ivermectin. In its human form, some studies have shown it to be very effective vs Covid.
https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/08000/ivermectin_for_prevention_and_treatment_of.7.aspx
Of course the vaccine is our first line of defense, of course its beyond stupid to take the horse version.
However there are larger studies going on that should provide data by the end of the year. If it does prove highly effective, its another tool that can be used around the world to end the pandemic.
The truth is that the medical community has not tossed aside ivermectin as a possible treatment for COVID. Most doctors will say that it hasn't been approved, hasn't been studied enough, has side effects, ...
just a few days ago a judge was forced to evaluate the evidence about ivermectin and he acknowledged that there are signs it could be useful but it is not conclusive at this point.
it is disconcerting to see people on the "left" lumping ivermectin along with injecting bleach and just making fun of it. I disagree. there may be other treatments that help covid patients, along with vaccination.
let's be objective and follow the science.
Tommymac
(7,263 posts)Dr. Peter Manu's profile says he is a common Doctor of Internal Medicine at Amityville, which matches the info on the 'Journal" site.
Google reveals that his name may really be DR. Petre Manu,; he is Romanian and was schooled there. Very confusing as some articles call him Peter and some Petre. His expertise seems to be in the field of treating mental illnesses.
Peter Manu is considered an expert in the management of medical issues of patients with severe mental illnesses. He is the author of the chapter Medical Consultation in Psychiatry in the last 4 editions of the authoritative Cecil Textbook of Medicine (2008, 2012, 2016, 2020).
Also, that journal is not particularly highly rated. See this site:
https://academic-accelerator.com/Impact-Factor-IF/American-Journal-of-Therapeutics
Had it's best year in 2020 - but WAYYYYY down in 2021. Even then it looks like it only rates in the 40's in percentile overall among all Journals.
IMO would take it's conclusions with a grain of salt at this time.
BumRushDaShow
(127,317 posts)have been pulled for fraud.
They note one of their "search" sources as this -
https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/fulltext/2021/08000/ivermectin_for_prevention_and_treatment_of.7.aspx
By Brenda Goodman, MA
The CDC is warning physicians to be on the lookout for cases of ivermectin overdose, as people increasingly self-prescribe the drug in an effort to prevent or treat COVID-19. Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic drug that is used to treat river blindness and intestinal roundworm infection in humans and to de-worm pets and livestock. Lotions and creams containing ivermectin are also used to treat head lice and rosacea.
A study published last March showed that ivermectin killed SARS-CoV-2 in cells growing in a lab within 48 hours, and proposed that the medication be investigated as a cheap and easily available treatment for COVID-19. But cells are not people, and subsequent studies have failed to find any benefit. Others have been flagged for fraud. Even the drug company Merck, which manufactures ivermectin, has issued a statement saying there's no scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID. The FDA warned about the drug's use for COVID in March.
But that hasn't stopped people from seeking it out. In a new communication to its Health Alert Network, the CDC says cases of overdose and misuse are rising. More than 88,000 prescriptions were written for the drug ivermectin in the week ending August 13, an increase of 2,400% over the weekly average prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Those numbers don't reflect the pills people order off the internet or bottles of liquid "sheep drench" or injection formulations sold in farm supply stores. The Mississippi State Department of Health issued an alert last Friday after reports of people taking livestock medications spiked. Veterinary formulations of ivermectin may be highly concentrated and may contain inactive ingredients that have not been evaluated for use in humans.
https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20210827/cdc-alerts-doctors-sharp-increase-ivermectin-use-covid
And specifically this was noted this past July about fraudulent studies being searched and promoted -
The preprint endorsing ivermectin as a coronavirus therapy has been widely cited, but independent researchers find glaring discrepancies in the data
Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Thu 15 Jul 2021 13.30 EDT
Last modified on Fri 6 Aug 2021 03.26 EDT
The efficacy of a drug being promoted by rightwing figures worldwide for treating Covid-19 is in serious doubt after a major study suggesting the treatment is effective against the virus was withdrawn due to ethical concerns. The preprint study on the efficacy and safety of ivermectin a drug used against parasites such as worms and headlice in treating Covid-19, led by Dr Ahmed Elgazzar from Benha University in Egypt, was published on the Research Square website in November.
It claimed to be a randomised control trial, a type of study crucial in medicine because it is considered to provide the most reliable evidence on the effectiveness of interventions due to the minimal risk of confounding factors influencing the results. Elgazzar is listed as chief editor of the Benha Medical Journal, and is an editorial board member.The study found that patients with Covid-19 treated in hospital who received ivermectin early reported substantial recovery and that there was a substantial improvement and reduction in mortality rate in ivermectin treated groups by 90%.
But the drugs promise as a treatment for the virus is in serious doubt after the Elgazzar study was pulled from the Research Square website on Thursday due to ethical concerns. Research Square did not outline what those concerns were. A medical student in London, Jack Lawrence, was among the first to identify serious concerns about the paper, leading to the retraction. He first became aware of the Elgazzar preprint when it was assigned to him by one of his lecturers for an assignment that formed part of his masters degree. He found the introduction section of the paper appeared to have been almost entirely plagiarised.
It appeared that the authors had run entire paragraphs from press releases and websites about ivermectin and Covid-19 through a thesaurus to change key words. Humorously, this led to them changing severe acute respiratory syndrome to extreme intense respiratory syndrome on one occasion, Lawrence said.
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/huge-study-supporting-ivermectin-as-covid-treatment-withdrawn-over-ethical-concerns
This is the best advice at this point and take any bullshit "meta-analysis of studies" of invermectin and their claims, with a huge block of salt -
Link to tweet
TEXT
@US_FDA
·
Aug 21, 2021
You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it.
Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19
Using the Drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19 can be dangerous and even lethal. The FDA has not approved the drug for that purpose.
fda.gov
U.S. FDA
@US_FDA
More answers to questions...
FAQ: COVID-19 and Ivermectin Intended for Animals
Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? A: No. Ivermectin is not approved for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19.
fda.gov
7:59 AM · Aug 21, 2021
TheRickles
(2,000 posts)This paper also has links to studies from a wide variety of journals, some of better quality than others.
The key point is the surprising correlation between high usage of Ivermectin in Africa (to prevent river blindness) and the relatively low rates of Covid disease there. Where there's smoke....
BumRushDaShow
(127,317 posts)Are you fucking kidding me?
Here's a clue -
Epidemiology & Risk Factors
Onchocerca infections are found in tropical climates. The main burden is in 31 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The list of 31 African countries can be found on the World Health Organization (WHO) Onchocerciasis Fact Sheetexternal icon website. The parasite is also found in limited areas in South America and in Yemen in the Middle East. In the Americas, four countries have been verified by the World Health Organization (WHO) as free from onchocerciasis: Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Guatemala. Only a single small transmission zone remains in South America, crossing the border between the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Brazil.. The Global Burden of Disease Study estimated that in 2017 there were at least 20.9 million people are infected worldwide, of which 14.6 million had skin disease and 1.15 million had vision loss.
Most of the areas where the blackflies are found are rural agricultural areas in sub-Saharan Africa in the countries mentioned previously. Most of the areas where the blackflies are found are rural agricultural areas in sub-Saharan Africa in the countries mentioned previously. Usually, many bites are needed before becoming infected. Therefore, those travelers to at-risk areas most likely to become infected are long-term missionaries, Peace Corps volunteers, field researchers, and other long-term travelers.
https://www.cdc.gov/parasites/onchocerciasis/epi.html
Keywords = "rural areas"
"Rural areas" meaning that the population density is very low and thus you would have little contact with any number of "new" disease pathogens.
There is no "high usage of that drug" when the majority of the population of 1.2 BILLION lives in or near the urban areas and thus is not exposed to "river blindness" and of those who have contracted it, you are talking about less than 1%.
This belies the bullshit of the reporting of what is happening on that continent - https://www.scidev.net/sub-saharan-africa/news/deadly-covid-19-delta-variant-taking-hold-in-africa/
And this is probably closer to explaining some of what is going on there outside of some idiotic racist crap about treatment for "river blindness" explaining low COVID-19 infections - https://www.nature.com/articles/d44148-021-00009-0
This is why the U.S. needs to start learning about the continent of Africa and stop thinking of it as a "country" of jungle bunnies that is only good for safaris.
TheRickles
(2,000 posts)But no, I don't excuse your language. There's no need to resort to cursing to make your points on a forum like DU.
You cited some good resources, and certainly rural settings have lower exposures to Covid, so that is clearly an important variable.
However, the clinical evidence about Ivermectin's efficacy has convinced at least one American medical school to use it as part of its preventive and acute inpatient treatment regimens for Covid: https://www.evms.edu/media/t4_training/EVMS_Critical_Care_COVID-19_Protocol.pdf
BumRushDaShow
(127,317 posts)And the link you have to the protocol, written by the organization that the EVMS program is a member of, has been criticized and rejected for making false and misleading claims, and continues to be pulled from journals -
A review article containing contested claims about the tropical medicine drug as a COVID-19 treatment was listed as provisionally accepted on the journals website before being removed this week.
Catherine Offord
Mar 2, 2021
The editors of Frontiers in Pharmacology have taken down an article about the use of the antiparasitic drug ivermectin in COVID-19 patients. The paper, which was written by members of an organization called the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), had been provisionally accepted and posted in abstract form by the journal in January, but was ultimately rejected this Monday (March 1). The editors determined that it contained unsubstantiated claims and violated the journals editorial policies. By the end of last week, the abstract had been viewed more than 85,000 times, according to snapshots available on the internet archive. The papers removal has drawn anger from members of the FLCCC and its followers.
In comments on Twitter and in an interview with The Scientist, the organizations president, Pierre Kory, describes the move as censorship. He adds in the interview that the paper had already successfully passed through multiple rounds of review. In reversing the papers acceptance, the journal is allowing some sort of external peer reviewer to comment on our paper, he says. I find that very abnormal. Ivermectin is widely used in tropical medicine to treat parasitic infections, but its use as a COVID-19 drug has been controversial since the beginning of the pandemic, with major health organizations consistently stating that there is insufficient evidence for its efficacy in prevention or treatment of the disease.
(snip)
This isnt the first time that Kory and his colleagues at FLCCC have been accused of making unsubstantiated claims about ivermectin. In December, Kory gave a statement at a US Senate hearing on COVID-19 treatments in which he called ivermectin effectively a miracle drug that could obliterate disease transmission and prevent illnessclaims that Associated Press fact-checkers labelled False at the time. Kory, who formerly oversaw critical care at the UW Health in Wisconsin, tells The Scientist that he now regrets using miracle and other hyperbolic terminology.
Later in December, FLCCC founder Paul Marik, the first author on the now-rejected Frontiers manuscript and a professor at Eastern Virginia Medical School, wrote a paper reviewing ivermectin that included references to debunked papers, including an observational study of ivermectin in COVID-19 patients led by now-discredited Surgisphere Corporation. That study, which had been posted on the preprint server SSRN, was taken down at the request of one of the authors back in May after concerns were raised about the provenance of the companys data.
https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/frontiers-removes-controversial-ivermectin-paper-pre-publication-68505
I posted this before and will post again -
Link to tweet
TEXT
@US_FDA
·
Aug 21, 2021
You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y'all. Stop it.
Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19
Using the Drug ivermectin to treat COVID-19 can be dangerous and even lethal. The FDA has not approved the drug for that purpose.
fda.gov
U.S. FDA
@US_FDA
More answers to questions...
FAQ: COVID-19 and Ivermectin Intended for Animals
Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19? A: No. Ivermectin is not approved for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19.
fda.gov
7:59 AM · Aug 21, 2021
I suggest you cease promoting the roundly discredited use of that product.
TheRickles
(2,000 posts)And using it clinically. Many drugs are prescribed for non-FDA-approved indications, but go on to ultimately get approval for the new use.
BumRushDaShow
(127,317 posts)And no, that's not how the "approval process" works. There is a procedure where one would apply for what is called an "IND" (Investigational New Drug) -
(snip)
There are three IND types:
An Investigator IND is submitted by a physician who both initiates and conducts an investigation, and under whose immediate direction the investigational drug is administered or dispensed. A physician might submit a research IND to propose studying an unapproved drug, or an approved product for a new indication or in a new patient population. Emergency Use IND allows the FDA to authorize use of an experimental drug in an emergency situation that does not allow time for submission of an IND in accordance with 21CFR , Sec. 312.23 or Sec. 312.20. It is also used for patients who do not meet the criteria of an existing study protocol, or if an approved study protocol does not exist. Treatment IND is submitted for experimental drugs showing promise in clinical testing for serious or immediately life-threatening conditions while the final clinical work is conducted and the FDA review takes place.
There are two IND categories:
Commercial Research (non-commercial)
The IND application must contain information in three broad areas:
Animal Pharmacology and Toxicology Studies - Preclinical data to permit an assessment as to whether the product is reasonably safe for initial testing in humans. Also included are any previous experience with the drug in humans (often foreign use). Manufacturing Information - Information pertaining to the composition, manufacturer, stability, and controls used for manufacturing the drug substance and the drug product. This information is assessed to ensure that the company can adequately produce and supply consistent batches of the drug. Clinical Protocols and Investigator Information - Detailed protocols for proposed clinical studies to assess whether the initial-phase trials will expose subjects to unnecessary risks. Also, information on the qualifications of clinical investigators--professionals (generally physicians) who oversee the administration of the experimental compound--to assess whether they are qualified to fulfill their clinical trial duties. Finally, commitments to obtain informed consent from the research subjects, to obtain review of the study by an institutional review board (IRB), and to adhere to the investigational new drug regulations.
Once the IND is submitted, the sponsor must wait 30 calendar days before initiating any clinical trials. During this time, FDA has an opportunity to review the IND for safety to assure that research subjects will not be subjected to unreasonable risk.
(snip)
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/types-applications/investigational-new-drug-ind-application
where a new unique entity or a different use of an existing one, can be authorized for study.
More on that process here - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4435682/
You might as well promote snake oil as a "therapeutic treatment" for COVID-19. The state of VA can put them out of their misery quick, fast, and in a hurry but often the institution gets rid of the offending person first.
PatSeg
(46,804 posts)I was just coming here to post it!
Ford_Prefect
(7,828 posts)There really is only 1 cure for stupid.