16102021 - Southeast Gov INEC top official in trouble over $4m bribe

40—SATURDAY Vanguard, OCTOBER 16, 2021
Taking Ivermectin won’t
stop COVID-19 infection
— Experts
By Sola Ogundipe
ince news broke that Ivermectin has a
Sperceived therapeutic effect against the
COVID-19 virus, there has been mad rush for
the drug all over the world.
With countless tablets of the drug being sold
over-the-counter, the risk of misuse, overdose,
and purchase of the animal version is
dangerously high.
In Nigeria particularly, the shelf price of
Ivermectin tablets has gone up appreciably in
recent times as desperate stockpiling of large
quantities commenced in the wake of the
emergence of the Delta variant among other
concerns.
But health experts have warned that
Ivermectin has no effect in curtailing COVID-
19 and called for cautionary use.
As the controversy rages around the drug, an
international group of experts has faulted the
series of studies claiming that the drug is a
miracle remedy against the disease.
The scientists said the studies claiming that
Ivermectin can treat the coronavirus
disease have been found to be not only deeply
flawed, but unreliable even as they call for an
overhaul of medical research to prevent more
misinformation around unverified cures.
Flawed studies making
the rounds
In a letter in the Nature Medicine, a scientific
journal, the group of researchers explained
how rising doubts about studies claiming
ivermectin could help treat Covid are flawed.
They detail how one such piece had concerning
discrepancies in its data, which led to its
eventual withdrawal.
According to the World Health
Organisation, WHO, and the US Food and
Drug Administration, FDA, ivermectin is not
authorized or approved for use in preventing
or treating COVID-19 in humans. The CDC
notes that Ivermectin is approved for human
use to treat infections caused by some parasitic
worms and head lice and skin conditions like
rosacea.
The scientists argue that currently available
data do not show ivermectin is effective against
COVID-19, although clinical trials assessing
ivermectin tablets for the prevention or
treatment of COVID-19 in people are ongoing.
Warning that taking large doses of
ivermectin is dangerous, the experts say
ivermectin should be procured through
legitimate sources such as a pharmacy, and
taken exactly as prescribed.
•Drug not authorised for coronavirus
treatment or prevention
Part of the anxiety is that Ivermectin products
are different from those approved for humans
and that the use of animal ivermectin for the
prevention or treatment of COVID-19 in
humans is dangerous.
In another research, they said elements in its
methodology were flawed, and the errors were
then compounded by larger reviews, called
meta-analyses, which based their findings in
large part on these flawed studies.
Impossible numbers,
unexplainable mismatches in data
The scientists add that this
study is not alone and predict
others claiming ivermectin
has a clinical benefit will also
be withdrawn in the coming
months due to their
“impossible numbers”, and
“unexplainable
mismatches” in the data.
But the damage may have
been done with many
hundreds of thousands of
patients that have taken the
drug, according to the
principal signatory of the
letter, Kyle Sheldrick of the
University of New South
Wales in Australia.
“This research has created
undue confidence in the use
of ivermectin as a
prophylactic or treatment for
Covid, has usurped other
research agendas, and
Even the levels
of ivermectin
for approved
human uses
can interact
with other
medications,
like bloodthinners
probably resulted in inappropriate treatment
or substandard care of patients,” they wrote.
As a result, the scientists called for an
overhaul of how clinical data on Covid is
analysed. They said creators of meta-analyses
should both request and review the individual
patient data, the raw from individual
participants in a study or trial, of the studies
they use to reach their wider conclusions.
Similarly, the scientists said clinical trials
on Covid treatment should also make this data
available to ensure this kind of analysis could
happen. Any study that refuses to do so should
be treated with extreme caution or omitted
from analysis entirely, the scientists said.
They acknowledge their call may be
controversial because it represents a change
to a “long-accepted” scientific practice but
added that the ivermectin example justifies it.
“We believe that what has happened in the
case of ivermectin justifies our proposal: a
poorly scrutinized evidence base supported the
administration of millions of doses of a
potentially ineffective drug globally. Yet when
this evidence was subjected to a very basic
numerical scrutiny it collapsed in a matter of
weeks,” they wrote.
Ivermectin ineffective
against viruses
Meanwhile, Dr. Timothy Geary, one of the
world’s foremost experts of Ivermectin, also
warned that Ivermectin is ineffective against
COVID-19 or in fighting viruses generally.
Geary, the Research Chair in Parasite
Biotechnology at McGill
University in Montreal, Canada,
says that the 2020 study which
spawned much of the Ivermectincraze
is not being correctly read.
In an interview, he explained
that although the study did show
that Ivermectin could inhibit the
replication of COVID-19 virus
cells, many people are
misinterpreting the study and
believing that the drug has viruskilling
properties.
Geary explained, though, that
the concentration of Ivermectin
used in the study was so high that
it could not be used for treatment
in a human, and would likely
cause an overdose.
“In that study they showed that
in cell cultures, Ivermectin could
inhibit (Covid) replication, but
the concentrations required for
that effect were in a range called
the micromolar range - very high
concentrations relative to what you would find
in the plasma of a treated person or an animal,
which would be 20 to 50 times lower.”
Prescribed versions of Ivermectin drug come
in pill form, so liquid versions are not advised
and can lead to overdose which can cause
serious side effects and even death. They
warned against the misinformation being
spread around that it’s okay to take large doses
of ivermectin. It is not okay, they stated.
“Even the levels of ivermectin for approved
human uses can interact with other
medications, like 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 experts note that currently, the most
effective ways to limit spread of COVID-19
include getting a COVID-19 vaccine and
following safety precautions and guidelines.
To improve
cancer survival,
scientists
investigate what
kills patients
cientists don’t really know what kills
Smany cancer patients, but fruit fly
research could provide answers according
to University of California, Berkeley,
researchers who are finding
commonalities between the two that could
lead to ways to prolong the lives of cancer
patients.
Fruit fly research is already pointing to
a new anti-cancer strategy distinct from
the conventional goal of destroying the
tumor or cancerous cells. Instead, the
research suggests, launching an attack
against the destructive chemicals the
cancer is throwing off could increase
survival rates and improve patients’
health.
“It’s a really complementary way of
thinking about therapy,” said David
Bilder, UC Berkeley professor of
molecular and cell biology. “You’re trying
to help the host deal with the effects of the
tumor, rather than killing the tumour
itself.”
Jung Kim, a postdoctoral fellow in
Bilder’s lab, recently discovered that
tumours in fruit flies release a chemical
that compromises the barrier between the
bloodstream and the brain, letting the two
environments mix — a recipe for disaster
in numerous diseases, including infection,
trauma and even obesity. In collaboration
with the labs of UC Berkeley professors
David Raulet and Kaoru Saijo, Kim and
Bilder subsequently demonstrated that
tumors in mice that release the same
chemical, a cytokine called interleukin-6
(IL-6), also make the blood-brain barrier
leaky.
More importantly, they were able to
extend the lifespan of both fruit flies and
mice with malignant tumors by blocking
the effect of the cytokine on the barrier.
“The IL-6 cytokine is known to cause
inflammation. What’s new here is that this
tumor-induced inflammation is actually
causing the blood-brain barrier to open.
If we interfere with that opening process
but leave the tumor alone, then the host
can live significantly longer and healthier
with the same tumor burden,” Bilder said.
IL-6 plays other important roles in the
body, so to benefit cancer patients,
scientists would have to find a drug that
blocks its action at the blood-brain barrier
without altering its effects elsewhere. But
such a drug could potentially extend the
life span and health span of human cancer
patients, he said.
According to Bilder, scientists still are
uncertain what causes death in many
cancer patients. Cancer of the liver, for
example, clearly destroys the function of
an organ essential for life. However, other
organs, like the skin or the ovaries, are
less critical, yet people die from cancer in
these sites, too, sometimes very quickly.
And though cancers often metastasize to
other organs — multiple organ failure is
one of the main causes of cancer death
listed by doctors — Bilder questions if
that’s the whole story.
“Many human cancers are metastatic,
but that doesn’t change the basic
question: Why does the cancer kill?” he
said. “If your tumor metastasized to the
lung, are you dying because of lung failure
or are you dying from something else?”
For that reason, he works with nonmetastatic
tumors implanted in fruit flies
and mice and looks for systemic effects,
not merely the effects on the tumorcontaining
organ itself.
One systemic effect of cancer is
cachexia, the inability to maintain weight,
which leads to wasting of muscle even
when the patient is receiving intravenous
nutrition. While Bilder discovered one
possible reason for this — cancers release
a chemical that prevents insulin from
storing energy in the body — other
scientists have found additional
substances released by cancers that may
also be responsible for tissue wasting.