It would be cool if this happened in the US.

permalink

Interesting article, esp. the idea of a physician-led grassroots movement. Something similar is happening in Bolivia.

#How a Grass Roots Health Movement Led to Acceptance of Ivermectin as a COVID-19 Therapy in Peru Jun 12, 2020

Perhaps Peru is the epicenter of the movement for off-label use of Ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients. The doctors there swear by it. In fact, some of them curse the government for not embracing the anti-parasite drug sooner as they believe more lives could have been saved. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Peruvian authorities had no interest in Ivermectin. Rather, they leaned toward the emerging standard of care that was circulated in medical circles from the World Health Organization (WHO). However, when a group of Australians at Monash University and Peter Doherty Institute performed lab tests revealing that the economical and available anti-parasitic medicine absolutely zapped the novel coronavirus, a local inquisitive Incan inquiry commenced. This grassroots medical movement for Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 in many ways has been driven out of Peru as the story continues to unfold.

Why were doctors familiar with ivermectin in Argentina? It's a cattle producer, and ivermectin is used for that. Veterinarians and MDs talking?

#Peruvian Mysteries & A Disclaimer

For many weeks now, TrialSite News researchers heard a greater number of stories about the use of Ivermectin in both Bolivia and Peru. That Ivermectin has become an Incan, and for that matter, broader health movement cannot be denied for those that open their eyes and look in the right direction. TrialSite News has interviewed doctors around the world using the anti-parasitic drug to treat COVID-19 with significant success. However, the following disclaimer is required:

Although Ivermectin is now approved in Peru, it must be emphasized that that government’s decision was not based on formal, randomized controlled trials. Rather, an informal network of many doctors around Peru drove a kind of community movement to use the medicine to treat COVID-19. The government came to the conclusion that a sufficient number of experts in that country had formed a consensus that couldn’t be ignored.

This is TrialSiteNews's disclaimer, not Peru's.

#The University Influence?

TrialSite News was able to secure some university-based documents floating around in Peru that may have led to the off-label use and, ultimately, the approval. However, it is possible that the university treatment protocols including Ivermectin may have been influenced by the community physician practitioners. Perhaps community-based doctors were using the drug off-label and, in response, the more established, conventional university-based physicians started buying into the treatment approach—we can’t be certain at this point.

If you don't know, why raise the issue? $/word?

The document titled “Therapeutic Plan that includes Ivermectin in the First Line of Action” included a table delineating different Ivermectin doses based on severity of the infection. It is this table that could very well have reflected what was already becoming common practice around the nation of 33 million people. The table titled “COVID-19 Therapeutic & Therapies Plan Potential” represented a recommendation by three physicians originating from some prominent universities there. Specifically, Gustavo A. Aguirre-Chang, MD, educated at Lima’s Universidad Ricardo Palma (URP), who turned out to be an influential figure in the drive to make Ivermectin authorized.

Dr. Chang came up a month ago in this sub here.

#Overcoming the Ivermectin “Stigma”

Peruvian physicians took note upon learning about the Australian Ivermectin and COVID-19 preclinical research findings. However initially, Peruvian government wanted no part of Ivermectin. But Peruvians begged to differ. With an independent spirit arising out of an ancient Incan culture that goes back to the earliest stretches of human habitation in the New World, a local, grassroots, real-time observational case study commenced in pockets across the nation. Doctors went about using Ivermectin and reporting on positive results to colleagues. Conservative forces there resisted noting, after all, this drug was for animals.

Incan! Native vs white man?

#For Animals: Humans Need Not Try

The Australian Ivermectin lab experiment clearly made some people nervous. Otherwise, why else would the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) almost immediately issue a very intriguing warning in the form of a “Q&A” notice. As it turns out, the first line of defense against this drug, at least in the developed “first world,” was that Ivermectin was an “animal drug.” This sort of bias was evidenced clearly by the FDA’s Ivermectin warning. Titled “FAQ : COVID-19 and Ivermectin Intended for Animals,” the FDA took overt advantage of a loaded headline to convey an underlying point. Of course, the FDA is the world’s leading heath regulatory agency and they indeed had to offer the other vantage point as well: if one bothered to read just a paragraph down, the agency not only acknowledged the Ivermectin Australian study but also conveyed to those interested in the value proposition of Ivermectin, that they could set up and conduct randomized controlled trials to determine the evidence. But did they think anyone would take them seriously?

Another explanation for the FDA announcement is that rumors sourced from Sean Hannity's community forum falsely stated that farm supply stores were having their supplied of animal ivermectin wiped out. It spread from Hannity to a couple other conservative sites. True? Who knows or cares. I don't think it was anti-ivermectin bias in the FDA, just the usual super-cautious approach to safety and rules.

#But it was Created for Humans

In reality, Ivermectin was in fact created for humans. In Peru, doctors are treating COVID-19 patients with one drop every 24 hours for two days and many physicians report within a month they see patients fully recovered. Ivermectin was found to have animal use cases over time. For example, it could be used to kill ectoparasites in cattle and in dogs. In people, it has been used as an anti-parasitic drug (e.g. head lice) but also as a treatment against River Blindness and for conditions such as scabies and even atopic dermatitis in some cases. Here is a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) label for a variety of Ivermectin called Stromectol from Merck.

The label PDF and also as text here.

#Peruvian Grassroots Chatter to a Global Movement

In the meantime, Peru was getting hit by the deadly pathogen as the COVID-19 pandemic barreled south toward South America, meandering through jungle river valleys and up into mountainous villages, towns and cities. Currently with 214,788 cases and 6,109 deaths, doctors increasingly took matters into their own hands commencing community observational studies in towns and rural villages across at least parts of Peru.

Once the Peruvian doctors got wind of the Australian preclinical lab study, there were reports of Ivermectin use across the region. This was seen in not only Peru but Bolivia (where TrialSite News reported hundreds of thousands of treatments were handed out) to the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Brazil and across the world in places such as Bangladesh, India and the United States in small pockets of off-label experiments.

IVERTODO: Write up the two MDs in Texas!

Prominent researchers and industry observers were obviously skeptical and downplayed the Monash findings, arguing that studies in humans weren’t feasible due to dosage and other factors. However, in nations that struggle with poverty and lack of access to more expensive drugs, such as remdesivir, physicians had to chart their own course.

Hence, dozens if not hundreds of doctors around the world are prescribing Ivermectin in COVID-19 patients; Peru perhaps can be considered the epicenter of that movement. TrialSite News has interviewed a handful of these doctors and they all report the same thing: that the anti-parasite drug used for decades by humans for conditions such as head lice actually works better than remdesivir. This finding is heard from doctors all over the world; TrialSite News has interviewed physicians in Bangladesh, France, India, Brazil and the United States not to mention Peru, Bolivia and Mexico.

Really? "dozens if not hundreds of doctors". I've been paying attention and I'm aware of maybe 20? TSN could be working at this a lot harder than amateur unhealthy me though.

Even prominent research institutions, such as Johns Hopkins University and University of Kentucky, have decided to organize randomized controlled trials including Ivermectin.

AFAIK, those are the only two US institutions looking at ivermectin. UK is actually using ivermectin to treat milder patients, according to their protocol.

permalink