health

Cheap antidepressant shows promise treating early COVID-19

15 Comments
By CARLA K. JOHNSON

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Cheap covid drug?

Must be a conspiracy theory by anti-vaxx or something!

:-P

3 ( +5 / -2 )

Early treatment is extremely important for success. The above treatment was started within 7 days of the screening date or within 7 days of symptom onset. This is much better than the 10 day limit (if memory serves me right) set for the HCQ or IVM trials (they also used completely wrong doses!), but not as good as the 4 day limit used for the trials of the Pfizer and Merck new drugs.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X(21)00448-4/fulltext

-5 ( +1 / -6 )

In the group that took the drug, 11% needed hospitalization or an extended ER stay, compared to 16% of those on dummy pills.

The results, published Wednesday in the journal Lancet Global Health, were so strong that independent experts monitoring the study recommended stopping it early because the results were clear.

This must be a misprint. 11% needed hospitalization versus 16% who received dummy pills and this is called a great success and the test was recommended to be stopped early?

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

This must be a misprint. 11% needed hospitalization versus 16% who received dummy pills and this is called a great success and the test was recommended to be stopped early?

That is a realistic result, and if confirmed by subsequent studies it would mean a reduction of almost a third of the hospitalizations.

This is much better than the 10 day limit (if memory serves me right) set for the HCQ or IVM trials (they also used completely wrong doses!), but not as good as the 4 day limit used for the trials of the Pfizer and Merck new drugs.

Contrary to your belief there is not a single protocol being examined for the already confirmed useless drugs, they have been tried in many different kinds of dosages and timing, including as a preventive measure on people that have not been even infected. They failed to show any benefit even when used like that. This appears to do much better, but as the article mentions this is not a full confirmation but only showing promise, hopefully this will be confirmed later but thanks to the frauds made by people trying to fabricate data supporting ivermectin or HCQ the scientific and medical community are now much more careful before supporting anything new.

2 ( +6 / -4 )

Contrary to your belief there is not a single protocol being examined for the already confirmed useless drugs, they have been tried in many different kinds of dosages and timing, including as a preventive measure on people that have not been even infected.

When given early at the proper dose, they were found to be very effective. The large studies that are usually mentioned used the wrong dose at late stage patients, at a stage where the would be useless, they were designed to fail. The above fluvoxamine was not given at the ideal time, but always better than the often quoted HCQ and IVM studies.

-6 ( +2 / -8 )

When given early at the proper dose, they were found to be very effective

No they were not, properly controlled studies (without the unethical manipulations to bias the selection of patients for example) showed no benefit no matter when they were used, which completely disprove your comment. The "larger studies" still include quite a big variety of conditions and still the effect on meta-studies disappear as soon as the reports with invalid fabrications and manipulations are eliminated, as they should.

The supposed value of ivermectin and HCQ is completely dependent on terribly small or obviously false reports, the timing of the treatment do not improve it.

0 ( +4 / -4 )

Noone is rooting for expensive drugs instead of cheaper drugs. Of course the pharma companies very much prefer to make a profit. It's "pharma companies", not "pharma nonprofits." They don't pay salaries, research, tests, studies, production and distribution out of the goodness of their hearts.

But these "pharma companies" have often been fined for things like bribing officials, falsifying data...

The large and often quoted studies used to refute the cheap drugs' effectiveness were clearly designed in such a way as to fail.

Merck's Molnuparavir, cited in the article, at $700 for a 5-day course is not overpriced, though. $140 a day seems like a lot, but everyone who has ever been hospitalized can tell you that, in relation to what everything else there costs, it's really minor.

True, but if a treatment was available that was more effective, had a great safety profile, and only cost about $10 for the entire treatment...

What failed was the Elgazzar paper. It's withdawn, and so "were found to be very effective" vanishes with it.

You make it sound like everything was based on the Elgazzar paper, it wasn't, it is just one study among many. After questions were raised about that paper, the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Group (BIRD) removed it from their meta analyses and it did not change their main conclusion. There are plenty of good studies remaining to conclude that IVM is effective for both prevention and treatment.

-3 ( +2 / -5 )

But these "pharma companies" have often been fined for things like bribing officials, falsifying data...

Then provide proof the vaccines have falsified data or depend on bribed officials in every country all over the world where they were involved in the testing, else you still have no argument.

The large and often quoted studies used to refute the cheap drugs' effectiveness were clearly designed in such a way as to fail.

No they were not, as easily as you have not been able to criticize any of the examples brought here to the conversation, meaning that you accept they are valid and adequate, prime example the one here.

True, but if a treatment was available that was more effective, had a great safety profile, and only cost about $10 for the entire treatment...

How much do you imagine dexamethasone is priced? that have not stopped it from being universally recognized as an effective treatment, even if options a thousand times more expensive are available, this completely proves your argument is imaginary.

You make it sound like everything was based on the Elgazzar paper, it wasn't.

For many meta-analysis it actually was the most important piece that made them conclude ivermectin had usefulness, without it the conclussions were the opposite, specially because the only other comparable report from Carvallo in Argentina was found to have even worse data manipulations and fabrications of data that became clear as soon as researchers tried to confirm the information written there. At this point the only "analysis" that say ivermectin has any use are terribly flawed and well recognized by actual scientists as invalid because of methods purposefully twisted to favor bad reports over the best ones, this include the pseudoscientific report put forward by BIRD, which failed to declare its huge conflict of interest when promoting their flawed analysis.

https://gidmk.medium.com/does-ivermectin-work-for-covid-19-1166126c364a

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/ivermectin-is-the-new-hydroxychloroquine-take-2/

Actual meta-analysis that qualify the degree of quality of each report (for example with the well characterized GRADE methods) keep finding the same thing. Ivermectin has no use for COVID, independently from the timing of its use.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34181716/

1 ( +4 / -3 )

Actual meta-analysis that qualify the degree of quality of each report (for example with the well characterized GRADE methods) keep finding the same thing. Ivermectin has no use for COVID, independently from the timing of its use.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34181716/

Yes, I know, studies that support your narrative are "good" studies, and those that go against it are "bad" studies.

But the Roman et al. you linked to has been widely criticized for cherry picking studies, several errors (that only go in one direction), and conflicts of interest:

https://c19ivermectin.com/roman.html

After questions were raised about that paper, the British Ivermectin Recommendation Development Group (BIRD) removed it from their meta analyses and it did not change their main conclusion.

You don't say.

Yes, I do say. And in their own words:

"Recently, the study conducted by Elgazzar et al has come under scrutiny with accusations of scientific misconduct. His paper was apparently retracted without his knowledge and without giving him the opportunity to defend these serious claims. This situation is most unfortunate. While this issue is being resolved, we decided to redo the original meta-analyses excluding this study. The summary point estimates were largely unaffected when the study by Elgazzar et al was removed."

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

Yes, I know, studies that support your narrative are "good" studies, and those that go against it are "bad" studies.

No, as clearly written, studies that follow well validated methodologies that leave out bias are good studies, studies that have to fabricate data and try to deceive people are bad studies. You have no argument here.

But the Roman et al. you linked to has been widely criticized for cherry picking studies, several errors (that only go in one direction), and conflicts of interest:

A perfectly valid discrimination method based completely on the quality of the studies cannot be called "cherry picking" that is more what the BIRD group makes with their own, when they recognize they give the same value to deeply flawed studies without correcting this obvious source of bias, and they never even recognized the huge COI of being an organization made up solely with the purpose of promoting ivermectin, that is a much more unethical problem that what they criticize. You also did absolutely nothing to defend the multiple problems on that supposed study that I have linked about. How come you still want to consider it valid? is it just because it says something you want to believe? because that is deeply antiscientific.

The Elgazzar paper (and the Carvallo, and some others that keep being included in fake meta-analysis) were found to contain not only methodological problems but huge evidence of manipulation and fabrication to support the conclusions they wanted to push, that is why they were retracted, just saying "correcting some of the lies don't change our conclusions" is a very poor excuse for lying in the first place.

-1 ( +2 / -3 )

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