The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has upgraded their recommendation on ivermectin, making it an option for use in COVID-19, according to the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC).
The revisions were made one week after Dr. Paul Marik and Dr. Pierre Kory, founding members of FLCCC, along with Dr. Andrew Hill, researcher and consultant to the World Health Organization (WHO), presented their data before the NIH Treatment Guidelines Panel, stated FLCCC.
This new designation upgraded the status of ivermectin from “against” to “neither for nor against”, which is the same recommendation given to monoclonal antibodies and convalescent plasma, both widely used across the nation. By no longer recommending against ivermectin use, doctors should feel more open in prescribing ivermectin as another therapeutic option for the treatment of COVID-19. This may clear its path towards U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) emergency use approval.
“Ivermectin is one of the world’s safest, cheapest and most widely available drugs,” noted Dr. Kory, President of the FLCCC Alliance. “The studies we presented to the NIH revealed high levels of statistical significance showing large magnitude benefit in transmission rates, need for hospitalization, and death. What’s more, the totality of trials data supporting ivermectin is without precedent.”
In its ivermectin recommendations update, the NIH also indicated they will continue to review additional trials as they are released. “We are encouraged that the NIH has moved off of its August 27 recommendation against the use of ivermectin for COVID-19,” continued Kory. “That recommendation was made just as the numerous compelling studies for ivermectin were starting to roll in. New studies are still coming in, and as they are received and reviewed, it is our hope that the NIH’s recommendation for the use of ivermectin will be the strongest recommendation for its use as possible.”
Current meta-analyses of studies of ivermectin from around the world show a compelling trend towards the drug’s potent benefits against SARS-CoV-2. Ivermectin, developed in 1975, led to the eradication of a “pandemic” of parasitic diseases across multiple continents and earned the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for its discoverers, Dr. William Campbell and Dr. Ōmura Satoshi.
In related news, the manuscript written by the FLCCC has been accepted for publication, following a rigorous peer review, in Frontiers in Pharmacology.
