Does ivermectin work against covid-19?
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(CNN) -
Public health officials in the United States are aggressively dispelling claims by personalities in right-wing media that they have been promoting ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug used for livestock, as a potential COVID-19 treatment.
"You are not a horse. You are not a cow," the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) tweeted this Saturday.
"Seriously, all of you. Stop now."
What doctors say about ivermectin, an untested drug against covid-19 whose use has exploded in Latin America
Leading conservative media personalities - including Fox News anchors Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham - have mentioned ivermectin as a drug that could be used to treat COVID-19.
This is part of a recent theme in the right-wing media of attacking public health officials for promoting highly effective coronavirus vaccines as the best way out of the pandemic, rather than possible therapies to treat the virus.
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Throughout the pandemic, Fox News, radio, and right-wing websites have promoted unproven therapies to treat COVID-19, while questioning the efficacy of vaccines and masks.
For example, for months in 2020, these same personalities pushed the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a possible treatment, despite studies indicating that it was not effective and health authorities warning that taking it could have negative side effects.
FDA Warning
The FDA has been warning for months that ivermectin may be unsafe, saying it "has received multiple reports of patients requiring medical support and being hospitalized after self-medicating with ivermectin intended for horses."
Although ivermectin has uses in humans, the FDA has not approved it for the treatment or prevention of COVID-19 in humans, and the drug is not an antiviral drug.
"Taking a drug for an unapproved use can be very dangerous. This is also true of ivermectin," the FDA said on its website.
"There is a lot of misinformation out there, and you may have heard that taking large doses of ivermectin is okay. That's wrong."
The ethical dilemma of prescribing ivermectin against covid-19 2:47
A Fox News spokesman did not respond to a request for comment Monday when asked about the network's hosts promoting ivermectin.
Federal health authorities are not the only ones to dismiss the idea that the drug can treat COVID-19.
In Mississippi, where only 37% of the population is fully vaccinated, health authorities said Friday they had received a growing number of calls about people who had ingested the drug.
"Patients should be advised not to take any medication intended to treat animals and should be instructed to only take ivermectin as prescribed by their physician," the Mississippi State Department of Health said in an alert.
"Animal drugs are highly concentrated for large animals and can be very toxic to humans."
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