WITHDRAWN: Efficacy and Safety of Ivermectin for Treatment and prophylaxis of COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Background: Up-to-date, there is no recognized effective treatment or vaccine for the treatment of COVID-19 that emphasize urgency around distinctive effective therapies. This study aims to evaluate the anti-parasitic medication efficacy "Ivermectin" plus standard care in the treatment of mild/moderate and severely ill cases with COVID 19 infection, as well as prophylaxis of health care and/ or household contacts.Subject and methods: 600 subjects; 400 symptomatic confirmed COVID-19 patients and 200 health care and household contacts distributed over 6 groups; Group I: 100 patients with mild/moderate COVID-19 infection received a 4-days course of Ivermectin plus standard of care; Group II: 100 patients with mild/moderate COVID-19 infection received hydroxychloroquine plus standard care; Group III: 100 patients with severe COVID-19 infection received Ivermectin plus standar care; Group IV: 100 patients with Severe COVID-19 infection received hydroxychloroquine plus standard care. Routine laboratory investigations and rT-PCR, were reported before and after initiation of treatment. Group V stick to personal protective measures (PPM ) plus Ivermectin o.4mg / kg on empty stomach to be repeated after one week, and group VI stick to PPM only .Both groups V&VI were followed for two weeks ..Results: Patients received ivermectin early reported substantial recovery of laboratory investigations; and significant reduction in rT-PCR conversion days. A substantial improvement and reduction in mortality rate in Ivermectin treated groups; group I (99% & 0.0%, respectively) and group III (94% & 2.0% respectively) versus hydroxychloroquine plus standard care treated groups; group II (74% and 4%, respectively) and group IV (50% and 20%, respectively). Ivermectin had significantly reduced the incidence of infection in health care and household contacts up to 2% compared to 10% in non ivermectin group when used as a prophylaxis. Conclusion: Early addition of Ivermectin to standard care is very effective drug for treatment of COVID-19 patients with significant reduction in mortality,rt-PCR conversion days , recovery time hospital stay compared to Hydroxychloroquine plus standard care. Early use of Ivermectin is very useful for controlling COVID 19 infections; prophylaxis and improving cytokines storm

Systematic review and meta-analysis of ivermectin for treatment of COVID-19: evidence beyond the hype

“…After excluding 52 duplicates, 341 titles and abstracts were screened. Full-text articles for the remaining 33 records were retrieved, of which two were excluded for testing the drug for COVID-19 prophylaxis; [ 42 , 43 ] four for retraction [ 21 – 24 ], two due to the study design (not RCT) [ 44 , 45 ], one for including children [ 46 ], and one for a too short follow-up, having not assessed patients until recovery or death [ 47 ] (Fig. 1 ).…”

“…The need for evidence synthesis is imperative for medical doctors and the community. Systematic reviews have been published on the topic, but in the majority of them a retracted trial represented more than 10% of the overall effect, [ 20 , 21 , 27 , 28 ] which overestimated the benefits. One of those was recently reassessed after the exclusion of this trial, which changed the results from reducing mortality to lack of benefit in this outcome [ 17 ].…”

Flavonoids are promising safe therapy against COVID-19

“…These include (i) Nucleic acid vaccines as mRNA-based-vaccines such as Moderna (Mahase 2020), BioNTech/Pfizer (Müller et al 2021) (Palacios et al 2020) developed by China Sinovac biotech company; (iv) Antigen-based vaccine EpiVacCorona that was developed by the Vector Institute (Ryzhikov et al 2021). On the other hand, the treatments suggested for COVID-19 are limited to those either still in clinical trials such as favipiravir (Pilkington et al 2020), ribavirin (Khalili et al 2020), lopinavir-ritonavir (Dalerba et al 2020), emetine (Choy et al 2020), hydroxychloroquine (Chen et al 2020a), methionine (Zhang et al 2020), homoharringtonine and ivermectin (Elgazzar et al 2020) or initially approved by U.S. FDA such as remdesivir (Beigel et al 2020). Furthermore, CR3022 monoclonal antibody with binding affinity to the RBD of SARS-CoV-2 S protein was suggested as a therapeutic approach .…”

Coronavirus Disease 19 (COVID-19) Pharmacologic Treatment

“…In a study from Egypt which included 400 patients with confirmed COVID-19 patients with mild/moderate and severe COVID-19 who were treated with ivermectin plus standard of care (azithromycin, vitamin C, zinc, lactoferrin, acetylcysteine and prophylactic or therapeutic anticoagulation) had lower mortality rate (0% and 2%, respectively) in comparison to patients who received hydroxychloroquine and standard of care (4% and 20%, respectively). Also, they had substantial improvement in laboratory parameters one week after treatment (p<0.001) [73] . A retrospective study of 280 patients hospitalized due to COVID-19 showed lower mortality in patients who were treated with ivermectin (15.0% vs. 25.2%; OR, 0.52; 95% CI, 0.29-0.96; P = 0.03).…”