That's a true fact about the world (1), but not relevant here.
We are not looking at preclinical research and claiming efficacy. We are looking at clinical research - which shows efficacy with very strong confidence - and analyzing results based on study design.
It's possible that something causes systematic bias - for example a meta-analysis of paxlovid studies that includes those failing to exclude contraindicated patients is systematically biased. Or perhaps studies are all fraudulent or garbage. These do not apply here, but for someone that has not analyzed the studies it is possible. Indeed, the last refuge of those claiming no efficacy here is to claim that all of the studies are garbage.
Analyzing how results vary across studies based on design dimensions is a way of confirming a real treatment effect - when we see expected interactions with very high confidence across multiple dimensions we know the effect is real - systematic biases, fraudulent, garbage studies will not create these results.
Clearly there is strong biological plausibility (2) for the efficacy (a Bradford Hill criterion), but here we start with the clinical research and use the mechanisms as additional confirmation of a real effect vs. a systematic bias or garbage studies.
The unrealistic conspiracy - that we both rule out - is the only way we know that could create the observed results, other than a real treatment effect.
Lack of any other option confirms a real treatment effect.
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(1) Only 0.5% of the 11,000 proposed compounds show efficacy in clinical studies to date:
c19early.org/treatments.html.
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(2) Summary of preclinical research (note that many of these are animal studies):
Ivermectin is long-known to be 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).
Most of these are RNA viruses. This is not comprehensive - just a sample of virus-related research.
For SARS-CoV-2, 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), may minimize SARS-CoV-2 induced cardiac damage (34,35), may counter immune evasion by inhibiting NSP15-TBK1/KPNA1 interaction and restoring IRF3 activation (36), may disrupt SARS-CoV-2 N and ORF6 protein nuclear transport and their suppression of host interferon responses (37), reduces TAZ/YAP nuclear import, relieving SARS-CoV-2-driven suppression of IRF3 and NF-κB antiviral pathways (38), increases Bifidobacteria which play a key role in the immune system (39), has immunomodulatory (40) and anti-inflammatory (41,42) properties, and has an extensive and very positive safety profile (43).
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