UWI professor: Studies on drug promoted for covid19 use unreliable

Dean of the Faculty of Medical Sciences Prof Terrence Seemungal has said while studies have been done on the use of the drug Ivermectin in covid19 patients, they were either poorly controlled or not controlled at all.

Speaking to Newsday in a phone interview last week, Seemungal said while he was happy for studies to be done on the effectiveness of the drug, larger studies were needed.

He said the drug is used in some countries in Africa to treat a disease known as river blindness. Also known as Onchocerciasis, it is caused by infection with a parasitic worm.

“People believe that because we have experience in treating one disease it can be used, from a public health perspective, in another disease.”

Seemungal said, however, that is not always the case.

He said many also believed the drug hydroxychloroquine would be effective, but when used for covid19 there were complications.

Hydroxychloroquine is used to prevent and treat malaria and for other ailments such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.

“Ivermectin, from the laboratory experiments, would have appeared to have some sort of effect. We are not sure. We don’t understand it fully and for that reason, it is cleared by the World Health Organisation (WHO) for experimental use only.”

WHO said in a statement in March current evidence on the use of the drug to treat covid19 patients is inconclusive.

“Until more data is available, WHO recommends that the drug only be used within clinical trials.”

Seemungal said small studies have been done, some of which show a positive effect for Ivermectin and others which show no effect.

“The balance of evidence does not weigh heavily either for or against Ivermectin,” he said.

He said the National Institute of Health in the US did a detailed review of all the studies on Ivermectin and the general conclusion was that the studies were too small for it to be introduced to the global market.

He said when a drug is used on a select group of people and then suddenly introduced to the masses, there may be unanticipated side effects.

“Covid19 affects or can affect almost all the organs in the body and we don’t know how Ivermectin will behave in such patients.”

He said although it works for river blindness, that disease only affects one part of the body. “Covid19 affects all parts of the body so you cannot assume what works in one disease will work in all diseases.”

Last week, the religious group TT Response, led by Dr Victor Gill, heavily advocated for the use of the drug in Trinidad and Tobago and questioned why the Ministry of Health is not using the drug on covid19 patients.

Gill suggested that if covid19 numbers are on the decline it is because the drug is being sold on the black market for public consumption.

“People are jumping to conclusions,” said Seemungal in response. He said there is a graph in circulation online that shows the drug is being used in Dehli, India, and cases are dropping in that area.

“Because they use Ivermectin does not mean cases are falling, because cases are falling all over India, regardless of whether Ivermectin was used.”

Seemungal applauded the population health control measures based on the non-pharmaceutical interventions that the government has implemented.

“It worked last year and it’s working this year – a bit slower than last year because of the (Brazilian) variant – but it is working.”

On Tuesday, TT Response also addressed concerns about vaccinated individuals making the unvaccinated sick through a mechanism known as shedding, where the illness is transferred from the vaccinated to the unvaccinated.

Seemungal explained that in order for shedding to occur, the vaccine has to contain the live virus.

“There is no vaccine that contains the live virus.”

He said there are vaccines that do carry the live virus and can shed, but the covid19 vaccines do not.

“I really have a hard time understanding any sensible thinking around that one…I don’t think that is a feasible hypothesis at all.”