COVID-19 Evidence Alerts
from McMaster PLUSTM

Current best evidence for clinical care (more info)

Treatment Padhy BM, Mohanty RR, Das S, et al. Therapeutic potential of ivermectin as add on treatment in COVID 19: A systematic review and meta-analysis. J Pharm Pharm Sci. 2020;23:462-469. doi: 10.18433/jpps31457.
Abstract

The current management of COVID-19 is mostly limited to general supportive care and symptomatic treatment. Ivermectin is a broad-spectrum anti-parasitic drug used widely for the treatment of onchocerciasis and lymphatic filariasis. Apart from its anti-parasitic effect it also exhibits antiviral activity against a number of viruses both in vitro and in vivo. Hence, we conducted this systematic review and meta-analysis to assess the currently available data on the therapeutic potential of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 as add on therapy. A total of 629 patients were included in the 4 studies and all were COVID-19 RT-PCR positive. Among them, 397 patients received ivermectin along with usual therapy. The random effect model showed the overall pooled OR to be 0.53 (95%CI: 0.29 to0.96) for the primary outcome (all-cause mortality) which was statistically significant (P=0.04). Similarly, the random effect model revealed that adding ivermectin led to significant clinical improvement compared to usual therapy (OR=1.98, 95% CI: 1.11 to 3.53, P=0.02).  However, this should be inferred cautiously as the quality of evidence is very low. Currently, many clinical trials are on-going, and definitive evidence for repurposing this drug for COVID-19 patients will emerge only in the future.

Ratings
Discipline / Specialty Area Score
Infectious Disease
Comments from MORE raters

Infectious Disease rater

Interesting even if the quality of reported studies is low.

Infectious Disease rater

This article is a review of the use of ivermectin in disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19). It implies that there is a place for ivermectin in treatment of this disease. This is not true. Ivermectin has no proven clinical utility in COVID-19 disease. It also says that treatment is only supportive (untrue) and cites other drugs as potentially useful that have been shown to be ineffective by RCT. This article is misleading and should be referenced only by its lack of usefulness.