This is an observational study, not strong enough to make any conclusions; The determination if a patient had taken ivermectin was self-reporting. There is no control of the dosage and how much time the patients took ivermectin before getting covid.<p>This is at best an indication of the need for better studies about the subject, but considering that Brazil's president is rabid pro-ivermectin and this was made in a medium city in a region favorable at the president, take this with a grain of salt.
In interpreting this result, one should keep in mind that an active parasite infection produces worse results for respiratory infections of all kinds. Taking ivermectin reduces parasite load.<p>The size and location of the study suggests that reporting of COVID-19 infections was by presentation, meaning asymptomatic or minimal infections were probably not counted.<p>tl;dr: These results will probably not translate well to places without pervasive parasite infestation. Wearing an N95 mask has a much larger protective effect than taking ivermectin, in any case, even there.
This may look and smell like a peer reviewed study, but I cannot find any reliability rankings for the journal 'Cureus'. Wikipedia article on Cureus is brief and it appears they allow anyone to publish. I would take this article with a few large grains of salt.
For context, this journal uses crowd sourced open peer review, which is an interesting concept.<p>There’s one review, and it’s (IMO) not substantive. I would treat this as a preprint basically (not that you shouldn’t read peer reviewed studies critically either)
Parasites are a comorbidity of Covid-19. Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic. You'll slightly improve your chances against Covid-19 by treating the parasites with Ivermectin so your body doesn't have to fight those, too. Parasites are endemic in Brazil in the South where Itajaí is located and Ivermectin is in heavy usage pre-pandemic as a result.<p>We already knew this. This doesn't apply outside areas with endemic parasites. It doesn't apply here in the US.
These authors have had one article retracted by the Journal of Intensive Care Medicine and another refuted by American Journal of Therapeutics.
<a href="https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2022/02000/Meta_Analyses_Do_Not_Establish_Improved_Mortality.11.aspx" rel="nofollow">https://journals.lww.com/americantherapeutics/Fulltext/2022/...</a>
Is this the "if the subject is suffering from worms, then treating the worms allows them to fight the virus" result? (So not relevant in the US)
These are the issues that limit ability to draw conclusions in this study: No pre-registration, No randomization, No blinding, No allocation concealment, No idea who did/did not fill prescriptions, Prescription writing was based on "judgement"?!, No uniform follow up, No idea who was followed up or lost to follow up
> SIQ™ is a predictive measure of scientific quality.<p>> How can I improve my article's SIQ™?<p>> Telling your friends, colleagues and advisors to review the article on Cureus<p>> Cureus offers a social media promotional add-on, or boost, for eligible published articles at an additional cost.<p>So this site is like PubMed but with payola?
Interesting. It’s not double blind and I’m not sure how practical this is but it does cast a lot of doubt on the conclusion that ivermectin doesn’t do anything unless the dose is lethal.
Science on this is great. However, don't parrot this to your friends until you see it replicated somewhere else (preferably somewhere not governed by ivermectin-peddling populists) and confirmed in a double-blind random-controlled trial (which this doesn't even get close to). After all, no reason to hold this stuff to a lower standard than the anyone want to hold the vaccines to (regardless of whether they realise these standards were already met there).
Why did this get flagged? It's pretty measured in it's findings:<p>These results indicate that medical-based optional prescription and citywide covered ivermectin can have a positive impact on the healthcare system. However, the present results do not provide sufficient support for the hypothesis that ivermectin could be an alternative to COVID-19 vaccines