A new study examined whether ivermectin or two other generic drugs benefited 1,323 patients when prescribed in the early days of a COVID-19 infection. Here’s what it found.
A new study found three generic drugs — fluvoxamine, which is often prescribed to treat depression, the controversial antimalarial ivermectin, and the diabetes pill metformin — failed to prevent the kind of severe COVID-19 that leads to an emergency-room visit or hospitalization.
“None of the medications showed any impact on the primary outcome, which included experiencing low oxygen as measured on an home oxygen monitor,” said Dr. Carolyn Bramonte, principal investigator of the study and an assistant professor of internal medicine and pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
Until the Food and Drug Administration authorized Pfizer’s PFE, +1.17% antiviral Paxlovid and Merck’s MRK, +0.74% Lagevrio in late 2021, there were no authorized treatments for people who had tested positive for the virus but were not yet sick enough to go to the hospital.
A long-awaited double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study conducted by Duke University School of Medicine and funded by the U.S. concluded in June that ivermectin did not improve symptom duration among COVID-19 patients with mild-to-moderate forms of the disease. The same research found that the drug did not reduce hospitalizations or death.