This is why effective treatments are denied.
A misleading statement becomes a false denial. If future data confirms benefit, the lethal error cannot be corrected.
Authorities should have real-time analysis for all disease treatments. The hantavirus ivermectin entry would report no clinical data but potential benefit based on extensive evidence (see below).
Failure to proactively analyze data in real-time guarantees delayed recognition of efficacy or harm, by which time moral, legal, career, and reputational liabilities strongly disincentivize any admission of error.
The WHO spokesperson below reports no clinical data showing efficacy, but leaves out all context: not mentioning that clinical data showing efficacy is impossible because there is no clinical data, and not mentioning the extensive data that suggests potential efficacy.
The news outlet changes this to a denial of efficacy, a false statement that can never be corrected. No matter how much future data shows efficacy, they will not admit to a lethal error.
The same thing happened for many COVID-19 treatments - poorly worded and incomplete statements quickly became unsupported denials, and those denials will not be corrected by the current generation of officials.
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Preclinical data suggesting potential benefit of ivermectin for hantavirus:
Host-directed anti-inflammatory/lung-injury effects are relevant to severe hantavirus disease characterized by endothelial dysfunction, vascular leakage, pulmonary edema, and cytokine-mediated injury. Preclinical ivermectin data shows reduced acute lung injury, pulmonary fibrosis/inflammatory infiltration, NF-κB/p65-mediated inflammation, and cytokine production.
Inhibition of importin-α/β-mediated nuclear transport - hantavirus N protein interacts with importin-α and can modulate NF-κB signaling. As hantavirus replication is mainly cytoplasmic, this is more relevant to viral protein trafficking or host immune-signaling modulation.
Broad-spectrum activity against dengue, Zika, West Nile, yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis, chikungunya, Semliki Forest, Sindbis, HIV-1, COVID-19 and influenza is also supportive. Hantaviruses are also enveloped RNA viruses, although biologically distinct from flaviviruses, alphaviruses, coronaviruses, retroviruses, and influenza viruses.
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References in COVID-19 context - many are also relevant for hantavirus:
Ivermectin, better known for antiparasitic activity, is a broad spectrum antiviral with activity against many viruses including H7N7 (1), Dengue (2-4), HIV-1 (3), Simian virus 40 (5), Zika (4,6,7), West Nile (7), Yellow Fever (8,9), Japanese encephalitis (8), Chikungunya (9), Semliki Forest virus (9), Human papillomavirus (10), Epstein-Barr (10), BK Polyomavirus (11), and Sindbis virus (9).
Ivermectin inhibits importin-α/β-dependent nuclear import of viral proteins (1,3,5,12), shows spike-ACE2 disruption at 1nM with microfluidic diffusional sizing (13), binds to glycan sites on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein preventing interaction with blood and epithelial cells and inhibiting hemagglutination (14,15), shows dose-dependent inhibition of wildtype and omicron variants (16), exhibits dose-dependent inhibition of lung injury (17,18), may inhibit SARS-CoV-2 via IMPase inhibition (4), may inhibit SARS-CoV-2 induced formation of fibrin clots resistant to degradation (19), inhibits SARS-CoV-2 3CLpro (20), may inhibit SARS-CoV-2 RdRp activity (21,22), may minimize viral myocarditis by inhibiting NF-κB/p65-mediated inflammation in macrophages (23), may be beneficial for COVID-19 ARDS by blocking GSDMD and NET formation (24), may interfere with SARS-CoV-2's immune evasion via ORF8 binding (25), may inhibit SARS-CoV-2 by disrupting CD147 interaction (26-29), may inhibit SARS-CoV-2 attachment to lipid rafts via spike NTD binding (30), shows protection against inflammation, cytokine storm, and mortality in an LPS mouse model sharing key pathological features of severe COVID-19 (31,32), may be beneficial in severe COVID-19 by binding IGF1 to inhibit the promotion of inflammation, fibrosis, and cell proliferation that leads to lung damage (33), significantly mitigates bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis by reducing collagen accumulation and inflammatory cell infiltration (34), improves oxidative stress markers while suppressing myofibroblast proliferation (34), may minimize SARS-CoV-2 induced cardiac damage (35,36), may counter immune evasion by inhibiting NSP15-TBK1/KPNA1 interaction and restoring IRF3 activation (37), may disrupt SARS-CoV-2 N and ORF6 protein nuclear transport and their suppression of host interferon responses (38), reduces TAZ/YAP nuclear import, relieving SARS-CoV-2-driven suppression of IRF3 and NF-κB antiviral pathways (39), increases Bifidobacteria which play a key role in the immune system (40), has immunomodulatory (41) and anti-inflammatory (42,43) properties, and has an extensive and very positive safety profile (44).
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