FDA warns against using anti-parasitic drug for Covid-19 after reports of hospitalizations - KDRV

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FDA warns against using anti-parasitic drug for Covid-19 after reports of hospitalizations - KDRV Posted: 05 Mar 2021 12:00 AM PST The US Food and Drug Administration on Friday said that people should not use ivermectin to attempt to treat or prevent Covid-19. The drug is typically used to treat parasites, such as lice and scabies. "There seems to be a growing interest in a drug called ivermectin to treat humans with COVID-19. Ivermectin is often used in the U.S. to treat or prevent parasites in animals. The FDA has received multiple reports of patients who have required medical support and been hospitalized after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for horses," the agency's announcement said on Friday. The announcement noted that the FDA has not approved ivermectin to treat or prevent Covid-19 in humans and the drug is not an anti-viral medication. "Taking large doses of this drug is dangerous and can cause serious harm," the announcement said, noting that even levels of ivermectin approved for other uses can interact with other medications, such as blood thinners. "You can also overdose on ivermectin, which can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hypotension (low blood pressure), allergic reactions (itching and hives), dizziness, ataxia (problems with balance), seizures, coma and even death." The announcement comes just a day after new research published in the medical journal JAMA that found ivermectin did not seem to "significantly improve" the time needed for symptoms to get better among patients with Covid-19. In January, the National Institutes of Health's Treatment Guidelines Panel said that there is not enough data to recommend for or against the drug to treat Covid-19 patients. The drug is a cheap medication with anti-inflammatory properties and it seemed to stop the virus from replicating in lab studies -- but more research is needed to determine how the drug performs against Covid-19 in real life. In the JAMA study based in Cali, Colombia, nearly 500 adults with mild disease who had symptoms for seven days, volunteered to help test the drug. The trial is what's known as a double-blind randomized control trial, the gold-standard of trials. Half the volunteers received the drug for five days, the other half got a placebo, and standard care. Patients were enrolled in the trial between July 2020 and November 2020 and doctors followed up with them through December. At the end of the trial, there were a nearly equal number of adverse events -- mostly headache -- in both groups of volunteers. The patients who got the drug said their symptoms subsided by 10 days. For the group that got the placebo, it was 12 days. Two days was not considered a "significant" improvement. "The findings do not support the use of ivermectin for treatment of mild COVID-19," wrote the researchers, based in Colombia. The study adds that larger trials may be needed to better understand if ivermectin provides any other kind of benefit to patients with Covid-19. In this case, the study focused on symptoms and mild disease.

Flaw in parasite's armour could be used to treat malaria - Canberra Weekly Posted: 05 Mar 2021 12:00 AM PST Researchers from The Australian National University (ANU) have exposed a fatal flaw in the deadly parasite that causes malaria which could potentially be used to treat one of the world's biggest killers. The researchers discovered a vulnerability in the parasite's metabolism, where the breakdown of certain nutrients causes the cell to struggle to keep fat molecules where they should be. The flaw could be harnessed for treatment.  Malaria is an often fatal disease caused by the spread of a parasite transmitted from mosquitos to humans. The parasite travels from the mosquito into the body's red blood cells where it hides from the immune system, making it difficult to naturally eradicate. By overloading the infected cell with calcium and depleting the amount of cholesterol, fat-moving proteins are activated, sending an "eat me" signal from the parasite to the body's immune system. Lead researcher and ANU PhD candidate, Merryn Fraser, says these chinks in the parasite's armour could be exploited to formulate new drugs to battle malaria. "We've shown that we can use chemical treatments to make the parasites more susceptible to being eaten by immune cells. That indicates we could maybe do the same thing with a drug," Ms Fraser, from the ANU Research School of Biology, said. "We found that when the parasite ingests certain nutrients, it causes the red blood cell to turn on a distress beacon. This would call the immune cells in to attack the parasite. "We then found that we could exploit this vulnerability by using a particular chemical on the red blood cells, which increased the chances of the parasites being eaten by the immune cells." The researchers say in recent years malaria parasites have become increasingly resistant to the main drugs used for treating malaria. "We're getting really worried about parasite drug resistance and that is underpinning our need to look for new drugs and new treatments," Ms Fraser said. "We don't have a highly effective vaccine, so while that is still being developed, we really need to make sure that we have other ways of effectively treating the disease." Malaria killed over 200 million people last year and remains the deadliest parasitic disease in the world. The researchers say climate change could have increased the range of the habitat that the mosquitos that spread malaria can live in. This has reinforced the urgent need for new methods of fighting the disease. These new findings come as part of a larger study into how the malaria parasite interacts with red blood cells and the immune system. "What we've really been trying to study is what happens to the parasite while it lives in the red blood cells so we can learn as much as possible about malaria and how it operates," Ms Fraser said. "Understanding these weaknesses in the parasite is another step in moving towards our big target of eliminating malaria worldwide." For more news:

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