Ivermectin doesn’t treat COVID or keep people out of hospital, study finds

Ivermectin showed some promise in treating COVID-19 in the lab, but studies have failed to replicate the response in humans.

Ivermectin, the anti-parasitic drug touted by some as an alternative COVID-19 treatment, doesn’t do much — if anything — in terms of alleviating symptoms or keeping people out of the hospital, a new study has found.

The clinical trial, which looked at more than 1,300 people who became infected with the coronavirus in Brazil, effectively ruled out the drug as a treatment for COVID-19.

The results were first shared in a presentation by the National Institutes of Health, and the full data was released Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

In the double-blind randomized study, researchers in Brazil compared patients — some given ivermectin while others received a placebo — and found no difference between the groups.

“There’s really no sign of any benefit,” Dr. David Boulware, an infectious-disease expert at the University of Minnesota and one of the study’s authors, told the New York Times.

“Now that people can dive into the details and the data, hopefully that will steer the majority of doctors away from ivermectin towards other therapies,” he continued.