I worked at Merck in the ‘80’s when (and, I think, where) Ivermectin was developed and I recall that it was described then as a drug that treats both internal (e.g. tapeworms) and external (eg. ticks) in farm animals and pets. Since then, I’ve noticed it being mentioned as a treatment for diseases that attack humans in Africa as well as a treatment for HIV.
What I found interesting in the referenced study, however, is that less than 10% of the placebo group died.
And an excerpted pdf:
“Asthma is the most well knownpotential life threatening medical condition associated with allergies. Therehas been a dramatic rise in morbidity and mortality from asthma for the last50 yearsdespiteaggressive medical treatmentsto control the asthmatic symptoms.
Allergyrelated symptomsareonly the tip of the icebergfor more serious medical problemsone is likelyto encounter later.
Allergieshavebeen associated with a whole list of symptoms including asthma, eczema, irritable bowel syndrome, ADD/ADHD, chronic sinusitisand bronchitis, canker sores, bedwetting, ear infections, dermatitis and hives, joint pain, behavioral problems and migraine headaches.This isonly a partiallist of allergy related symptoms.How could it be possible for simple allergies tocreate so many disabling and destructive medical problems?
What is a missing link between theallergy,allergytreatment and understandingthe cause of the problems? Allergies can be classifiedinto three majorcategories: food allergies, non-food allergies,and environmentalandchemical sensitivities. Food allergies, one of the most common yet overlookedallergies,havebeen associated with leaky gut, yeast and parasites. Parasitesand other hidden microbesinfest not only the intestinal tract but alsomigrateinto the liver, gallbladder, pancreas, lung, stomach and every part of the organ system. As an example, night coughs and asthma havebeen frequently associated with Ascaris(roundworms)in the lung.Bloating, flatulence, nausea,andchange inappetite havebeen associated with gallbladder/liver involvementfrom Strongyloides(parasites)or liver flukes(another form of parasites).
Allergies and parasites are intimately relatedfrom an alternative medicine perspective. Yet they seemsofar apart in the conventional medical understandingofthe role of parasites in allergies. Unfortunately, parasite infestations are hard to detect by the current medical testsof standard blood tests, stool ova and parasite evaluation. Most of the parasites are deeply embedded in the organs and very difficult to eradicate. They reproduce quickly and migrate to different partsof the body.
Elevated IgEor eosinophilsin the bloodmay give a clue for parasite infection and allergy problems. I have been treating my patients for parasites based on information from the Acupuncture Meridian Assessment(described in an article onmy web site). Often my patients’allergy symptoms improve when the parasites are cleared.Some parasitesmay have livedin your body for over 20-30 years. They “become a part of you” by being intimately connected to whatever chronic medical conditions youhave.There can bemany species of parasites infecting different partsof one’sorgans at the same time. Specific treatmentmay be requiredfor each parasite.
In alternative medicine, some natural herbal remedies,such as wormwood, black walnut husk and clove oil, are often usedfor parasites. However,these are often not strong enough to eradicate the parasites which have been embeddeddeeply into one’sorgans. These casesoften requiremultiple high dosesof pharmaceutical parasite medications such as mebendazole, albendazole, tinadazole, praziquantel, metronidazole,iodoquinole and levamisole in
. . .
link: http://www.preventionandhealing.com/articles/Parasites_and_Allergies.pdf
I worked at Merck in the ‘80’s when (and, I think, where) Ivermectin was developed and I recall that it was described then as a drug that treats both internal (e.g. tapeworms) and external (eg. ticks) in farm animals and pets. Since then, I’ve noticed it being mentioned as a treatment for diseases that attack humans in Africa as well as a treatment for HIV
Ivermectin is one of the most ubiquitous antiparasitic drugs used in medicine. It is administered to over 250 million people annually, most commonly in the tropical regions [23]. The drug is listed by the World Health Organization (WHO) as one of the essential medicines to combat numerous human parasites. A single oral 0.2 mg/kg dose in adults has an excellent safety profile, and the pharmacokinetics, pharmacology, and toxicity of ivermectin in humans are well known [23-28]. In two studies, fasting healthy human adult volunteers were given a single oral dose of 0.165 mg/kg of ivermectin. Blood plasma levels peaked at 46.6 (range: 16.4-101.1) and 30.6 (range: 13.9-68.4) ng/mL, respectively ~4 hours after ingestion [28]. Ivermectin acts on the invertebrate glutamate-gated chloride change, causing hyperpolarization of nerve and muscle cells [27]. https://www.cureus.com/articles/24455-the-benefit-of-a-single-oral-dose-of-ivermectin-in-humans-the-adverse-effects-on-cimex-lectularius-l-populations-and-fecundity
The drug’s two main discoverers and developers won the Nobel in 2015 for it, deservedly so, because it has been a tremendous force in the campaigns to eliminate untold amounts of human suffering in river blindness and filariasis. (Merck, I should note, has donated the drug for those purposes ever since the late 1980s). The drug is effective against a wide number of parasites and arthropods in general- pinworms, mites, lice, heartworms and fleas in dogs, parasitic worms in pasture animals, as an ingredient in ant baits, and more. It acts most strongly on glutamate-gated chloride channels, which vertebrates don’t even have, although it can also bind to other ligand-gated chloride channels at higher concentrations. It’s really just an accident of pharmacology that it doesn’t cause more problems – it’s very toxic to a number of turtle species, for example, and to some particular breeds of dogs (particularly collies and other herding types). In both those cases it seems to be differences in the P-glycoprotein transporter proteins in the blood-brain barrier; that’s one of the key “toss this compound back out” proteins in many cell membranes. Turtles apparently don’t pump the drug back out at all, and those dog breeds have picked up mutations in PGP (all that close breeding) that allow the drug to accumulate in the brain and set off severe neurotoxicity via those other ion channels.
Ivermectin and COVID-19 So what is this compound doing in the news with the coronavirus? Its ion-channel mechanism of action against parasites has no application to viruses. But it has been shown several times to have activity in cell assays against Dengue infection and to reduce viral loads in the mosquito vectors (see this paper and references therein), although the reasons for this are still unknown. There have been some human studies for efficacy, but all I can find out is that a preliminary read showed no reduction of viral load in the infected patients, and there seems to have been no update. But since denguevirus is also a single-strand positive-sense RNA virus, Ivermectin has come up as a possible coronavirus drug, mechanism or not. https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/05/11/whats-up-with-ivermectin