Ivermectin – the stuff of legends …

Doctor John Pridgeon,

A story that rivals, and in my opinion betters the historical narrative of penicillin, is the discovery, and ongoing subsequent history of the amazing and very controversial drug called Ivermectin. While Penicillin has become less and less useful over time, the opposite is true for Ivermectin – this drug seems to be the gift that keeps on giving, with new and fascinating uses being discovered at regular intervals. With the time-honoured medical practice of experimental off-label use and repurposing, when beneficial actions are noticed in people taking Ivermectin for its on-label indications, we now have discovered several new uses for this fascinating medicine.

In 1973, a bloke by the name of Satoshi Omura, a little-known microbiological scientist, was happily pottering around and collecting soil samples next to a golf course at a place called Ito City on the coast of Japan, just south of Tokyo. Omura specialised in isolating bio-active compounds from soil bacteria. Interestingly, the bacterium he isolated on this occasion, a Streptomyces Avermitilis, has never been found anywhere else on planet Earth!

Avermectins are the names of the precursor molecules to Ivermectin, which were synthetically changed through selective hydrogenation of the C22-23 bond. Ivermectin is thus classified as a semisynthetic drug.

In 1974, realizing he had found something rather special, Omura sent his promising cultures (that were demonstrating the unique biological activities of the organism’s fermentation products) to Dr William Cambell who worked for the pharmaceutical giant Merck in the USA, and the two of them collaborated thereafter to produce this wonder drug, which was included in the WHO’s Essential Medicines List in 1987.

In the early 1980’ their work to create and test a safer and more potent compound than Avermectin was eventually completed, and in 1981 Merck rolled out Ivermectin for veterinary use as a dewormer for the first time. In 1987 Ivermectin was used for the first time as a human medicine, and since then has been used widely in Africa for the treatment of Onchocerciasis (“river blindness”) and Filiarisis (“elephantiasis”). The lives of millions and millions of Africans have been helped immeasurably. To Merck’s great credit, something like FIVE BILLION doses of Ivermectin have been given free of charge to Africans. The Ivermectin donation program is the largest disease‑specific drug donation in history. Forty-one years later, in 2015, these two gentlemen were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their life changing work.

So, seldom has any drug been used as frequently as this. Anyone with doubts about the safety or efficacy if Ivermectin is smoking their socks.  By now, a very well established side effect profile shows Ivy is one of the world’s safest medicines ever, and any assertions that this drug is dangerous, especially when given to humans, as occurred during the recent Covid debacle, is utter rubbish.

Ivermectin is deemed to be roughly 40 x more potent than its nearest rival as a worm killer, BUT has the limitation of being ONLY a roundworm (nematode) killer. The Benzimidazole group of dewormers, and the reader might recognize the names Mebendazole (Vermox) and Albendazole (Zentel) as dewormers they may have used, have a much broader spectrum – they also kill cestodes (tapeworms) and trematodes (flukes).

I often tell my patients that if people realised the number of disease-causing bugs, parasites and worms we are all exposed to on a daily basis, they likely wouldn’t get out of bed on any given morning. My advice is that people, and especially their kids (who seem to be naturally averse to hand washing), and especially if you have pets (none of whom can resist a good licking of their and other pets’ nether regions every five seconds or so) should be dewormed at least twice a year. Worms are usually spread by the faeco-oral route – roughly translated as “someone’s poo finds its way into your mouth”.

Hookworms are particularly adept at encouraging this activity – the worm lives in the lower colon, comes out at night to lay its eggs on the skin of the anus, and then zips back into the rectum. These eggs cause pruritic ani – a tremendous itching of the perianal skin, and, as bum scratching is inevitable, the eggs jump ship via fingers and fingernails.

I recall in about 1974, my brother Russell (studying zoology and entomology at University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg at the time) having an absolute hissy fit when my father put his plate on the floor after a Sunday roast for the dogs to lick. Amazingly, Dad didn’t swat him and, recognizing when he had been given excellent advice, our father never did that again.

I believe a thorough deworming of at least 5-7 days is necessary, not the 1-3 days recommended by the makers of Zentel and Vermox. But most oftentimes the dewormer does not kill the eggs, these will hatch some (considerable) time after the course is finished, to let loose a new healthy generation of these nasty little critters. A common misconception is that adults don’t get worms, but the above concepts apply to people of all ages – I have yet to meet the worm that says “I’m not going into that mouth, I don’t do adults”!

Additionally, worms can be of a great size and variety and infect not only the gastrointestinal tract (including the biliary tree and pancreatic ducts), but find their way into and through tissues (e.g. bilharzia) and some parasites can infect your cells and the spaces between them. Yes, parasites can be that small! I believe this is one of the reasons why the dewormers have been found effective in the treatment of cancers, as the tremendous inflammation caused by the parasite infection will eventually lead to malignant transformation of cells.

Its mechanism of action is simple, Ivermectin binds to glutamate-gated chloride channels, thus overloading the parasite’s nervous system and paralyzing it. Unable to move or manoeuvre, or swallow, the worms die and literally fall out of your body. Many have been horrified at that which has been seen to land in the loo! Ascaris lumbricoides worms can be as long as 50cms!!! Eeeeuw. Ivermectin’s half-life is about 12 hours.

Ivermectin is also very useful for the treatment of other creepy crawlies, like mites, scabies, lice, and many species of flies. However, it does not work against bedbugs, mosquitoes, fleas or ants.

Enter the discovery of use #2 – it transpires that Ivermectin is a very effective broad-spectrum antiviral, and if used in higher doses (0.6 -1 mg per Kg body weight per day for 5-7 days) it can stop, or at the very least lessen the severity and shorten the course of your next bout of cold or ‘flu as well. I have personally used it with good effect against the pox viruses (chicken pox / shingles, and herpesvirus infections). The Covid deception was a real eye opener for me, where the powers that be vilified, and in some cases outlawed its use against the coronavirus. And today, no doubt a hangover from this unforgivable deception, the drug is STILL difficult to obtain as a tablet for human use.

Why, you may ask? Quite simple actually, if it was known in 2020 that this wonderful antiviral was so effective against SARS CoV 2, then the Covid mRNA “vaccines” would never have received Emergency Use Authorisation, which allowed for the incredibly fast rollout of these dangerous, crippling and sometimes fatal injections before standard proper and reasonable testing was completed. The financial bonanza afforded the likes of Pfizer (US$ 94 billion), Moderna (US$46 billion) and Co would have been lost, as would this golden opportunity to prune the world’s population. Anyone wanting to know more about the developments in the vaccine world will see that there are multiple 100% science-based platforms now with copious proof of the concept “no vaccine, is safe or effective”. Indeed, Bobby Kennedy, Secretary for Health in the Trump cabinet, has recently cut the number of vaccines mandated to be given to American children up to age 18 from 72 injections to 9! Multiple vaccines like MMR and DPT are no longer given.

Ivermectin was first studied as an antiviral starting around 2010 when papers started appearing in the medical literature reporting its usefulness against various kinds of viral diseases – it showed promising activity against literally dozens of viruses, including Dengue, Yellow Fever, Chikungunya, and even HIV. It was found to be very effective against corona and ‘flu viruses.

The cancer repurposing story only began 2 or 3 years ago when cancer biologists noticed its incidental anticancer effects, and started screening existing deworming drugs, including Ivermectin and the benzimidazoles for anticancer activity. Ivermectin repeatedly showed growth‑inhibiting and pro‑apoptotic effects in cancer cell lines. Apoptosis is the term for “programmed cell death”, something healthy cells normally automatically do when they become old and less effective.

Key early findings (in vitro and animal models): Ivermectin

• Inhibited cancer‑cell proliferation by inhibiting tubulin, the protein that makes up the mitotic spindle which pulls chromosome pairs apart during cell division
• Induced apoptosis (older cells, if they do not die naturally, have a tendency for malignant transformation)
• Ivermectin inhibits and blocks several major oncogenic pathways which normally tell cancer cells to grow and multiply
• Targeted cancer stem‑cell–like populations – cancer stem cells cause cancer recurrence, sometimes decades after “cure”

These findings triggered interest in repositioning Ivermectin as a multi‑target anticancer agent. Dr William Makis, a board-certified Canadian Oncologist, speaks very positively of the results he is having with this MUCH cheaper and less harmful cancer therapy, and his voice is being joined by more and more doctors, all enthusiastic to have a low cost, moderately effective anticancer agent. Beneficial results have been shown with the treatment of most cancers, and current data shows that about 84% benefit from dewormer treatment, with approximately a third of them showing cures.

Medical science is now looking to point this gift at new targets, including myiasis, trichinosis, malaria, Chaga’s disease, schistosomiasis (bilharzia), bedbugs, leishmaniasis, asthma, rosacea, epilepsy, tuberculosis, and Buruli ulcers.

Like I say, the stuff of legends. Personally, I do not go anywhere without my beloved Ivy.