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Comment by swader999 | Hacker News Reader

Hogwash, it helped me tremendously with long covid. Felt better in hours and then much better after a few days. I'm on prednisone now to finish off the last symptom, chest congestion/inflammation and it's getting much better on that.

Go and see a reddit forum on it and listen to thousands of others benefiting.

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It could have helped you, or your anti-tiger rock might have functioned as expected. That's the trouble with individual data points.

Just curious, and not trying to start a flamewar, but as someone who's just reading and trying to be better informed, how is this 3 minute old comment already greyed out? Would someone who has downvoted and perhaps sees what I might not be seeing about this post's personal experience care to explain why they think this is wrong?

N=1 is a fair criticism. But still.

The studies listed on this page are from reputable journals. Dig in. https://covid19criticalcare.com/ivermectin-in-covid-19/

Hello

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/16/huge-study-s...

That study was apparently submitted by a blogger posing as a medical student.

There's 62 and counting other studies out there. I linked to some of them above.

When this is all over, I look forward to forensic investigations of fraudulent medical publications which had the effect of advancing or slowing specific political viewpoints.

E.g. one strawman submarine story can be used to drown dozens of legitimate stories. Or one flawed negative study requires 100+ doctors to object before the claims are withdrawn. We need to learn from these unfortunate incidents and improve our systemic defenses.

Fortunately, digital trails provide much data that can be used to build better defenses.

The problem with that study is that it's widely cited and powerful; it is apparently responsible for the majority of all attributed positive effect for ivermectin in meta-analyses. The fact that it's author was fraudulent doesn't mitigate that!

The link I provided discussed that study and its impact and claimed that it certainly doesn't reverse any meta studies.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. Any meta-study that included the data from that paper has obviously been corrupted by it. And it was widely used in those studies.

Just by way of example, the FLCCC's comprehensive review article, which you cited favorably above, includes dozens of citations to the now-withdrawn Algazzar study.

Do "citations" affect the data? Citations are just for anti-plagiarism and for clout building, not science.

If they are studies that are performing meta-analyses (and most of the studies citing the fraudulent article are), yes.

Do meta analyses not control for the influence of outlier studies?

Could I just make up a phony result with 100000000x alleged effect and drown out all other studies in every meta analysis?

See the link at the top of the thread. That's more or less what happened here.

I didn't downvote -- the pro-ivermectin comments from swader999 are being made in good faith, and from what I can tell, the FLCCC's position is being held in good faith, too, not from a political or conspiratorial position -- but it's at least worth taking a look at criticisms of the FLCCC's methods that are out there. The big criticisms of ivermectin as a treatment for Covid-19 are largely criticisms of the way trials have been conducted. An actual quote from Pierre Kory, one of the FLCCC's founders, is, "We disagree with how most practice evidence-based medicine. We think they are way too biased toward randomized controlled trials."

https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/90552

And, it's possible that Dr. Kory's dislike of randomized controlled trials is in part because when they're run on his treatment methods, they don't seem to back them up: "Adults with mild Covid-19 who took a five-day course of the anti-parasite, tropical disease drug ivermectin showed no significant reduction in time to symptom resolution compared to patients taking placebo in a randomized, single-site clinical trial from Columbia."

https://www.physiciansweekly.com/covid-19-antiparasite-drug-...

The MedPage Today article notes that this isn't the first time this group of physicians' approaches have run into this "they think it works but the RCTs don't support it" problem, either. "Marik is known in the field for developing the HAT protocol for sepsis…a combination of hydrocortisone, ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and thiamine. His group's 2017 observational study of the protocol, published in CHEST, garnered excitement about the combination. But that hasn't been borne out in subsequent trials, including [names three studies]. Marik said the group adapted the protocol for COVID-19, using a more potent steroid and adding an anticoagulant, along with other elements."

So, this is controversial because they came up with a protocol for sepsis that hasn't been shown to work in randomized controlled trials, modified that protocol to treat Covid-19 in a way that so far doesn't seem to have been shown to work in randomized controlled trials, either, and are arguing that what this actually demonstrates is that randomized controlled trials suck. Maybe they're right, or maybe future RCTs will support this treatment as other doctors run similar trials. But, at slightly more than first glance, it seems to me that caution about ivermectin being a wonder drug in this context is warranted.

Lots of anecdotes vs peer reviewed research. I think I'll take the peer review thanks.

And that's what you should do. See the link above for decent studies. And really there is nothing else out there for long haul covid and ivermectin has been incredible for this group. Anecdotal evidence from an already proven safe and practically free drug is all we have right now.

The weight of peer-reviewed studies, once you exclude the most powerful one --- which has now been withdrawn --- is apparently that there is no positive effect on COVID19 with ivermectin.

Indeed. Here's a recent meta analysis[1] (discussed yesterday on the TWiV clinical update). Money quote: "In comparison to SOC or placebo, IVM did not reduce all-cause mortality, length of stay or viral clearance in RCTs in COVID-19 patients with mostly mild disease. IVM did not have an effect on AEs or severe AEs. IVM is not a viable option to treat COVID-19 patients."

High-power trials are needed to know for sure, but at this point the "true believers" (of which there are many) are operating much more on wishful thinking than solid evidence. It's still possible IVM will show some benefit, but I think at this point we can conclude fairly confidently it's not a silver bullet.

[1]: https://academic.oup.com/cid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/cid...

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