The World Health Organization (WHO) recommended on Wednesday “do not use ivermectin”For patients of coronavirusexcept in clinical trials. The announcement was made through a statement from the organization.

The ivermectina It is a commonly used antiparasitic drug that is promoted a lot on social networks but according to the expert group of the WHO, data from clinical studies to measure its efficacy against COVID-19 have not yielded conclusive results.

Our recommendation is not to use ivermectin for COVID-19 patients, regardless of the level of severity or duration of symptoms.”Said Janet Díaz, head of the clinical response team at the COVID-19 from the UN agency, at a press conference.

He stressed that the only exception to this recommendation, based on the current state of research, is for clinical trials.

The experts of the WHO They drew their conclusions from a total of 16 randomized clinical trials with 2,400 participants, but some of these trials compared ivermectin with other drugs.

The number of studies that allow comparing ivermectin with placebo “it is much less”Said Dr. Bram Rochwerg, a researcher at McMaster University in Canada and a member of the panel of the WHO who performed the evaluation.

Both Díaz and Rochwerg said that the recommendations are “alive”And will be updated as new research confirms or expands the current state of knowledge.

The recommendation of the WHO, the first on ivermectin, joins that of the European Medicines Agency, which, like the WHO, does not recommend its use except in clinical trials.

Its US counterpart, the FDA, explains on its website why the drug should not be used. ivermectina.

This recommendation runs the risk of causing skepticism and anger among the many advocates of this veterinary and human medicine, which is used against parasites such as scabies, lice or those that cause onchocerciasis.

The success of this drug comes in particular from an Australian study published in early 2020 that observed an in vitro efficacy, that is, in the laboratory, of ivermectin on Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The ivermectina It is cheap and is already used often in some Latin American countries, among others, and shares some characteristics with hydroxychloroquine, which are defended by certain doctors and political personalities, despite the fact that its efficacy has not been demonstrated and that an important trial clinician concluded that it has no effect.

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