A study conducted by Egyptian researchers claiming that Ivermectin is effective in treating the emerging corona disease “Covid-19” has been withdrawn, so what are the details of this study?
And why was it withdrawn?
And what does this mean about the already existing controversy over this drug?
And how did the pioneers of social networking sites interact with this event, which they described as a scandal?
According to a report by writer Melissa Duffy in the British newspaper "the guardian", the effectiveness of the drug "which is being promoted by right-wing figures around the world to treat Covid-19" is seriously doubted after this study was withdrawn.
Ivermectin is an antiparasitic agent with wide uses. It is included in the global essential medicines list for the treatment of many parasitic diseases, and is used in the treatment of onchocerciasis (river blindness), strongyloidiasis and other diseases caused by soil-transmitted worms.
It is also used to treat scabies, according to the World Health Organization.
The discoverer of plagiarism, counterfeiting and theft in the study was a British medical student 😂😂 God bless you, Benha University ✋ https://t.co/LNRxehwkIq
— Duraid Al-Dulaimi MD (@Vidoco2018) July 16, 2021
We start with the withdrawn study, which was conducted by researchers led by Dr. Ahmed El-Gazzar of Benha University in Egypt, and published on Research Square last November, in a pre-print state that means the study has not yet been peer-reviewed, Any other specialist scientists.
The researchers claimed that the study was a randomized control trial, which is an important and critical type of study in medicine because it provides the most reliable evidence of the effectiveness of therapeutic interventions.
As for the research leader (Al-Butcher), he is listed as the editor-in-chief of the Benha Medical Journal, and he is a member of the editorial board.
The study claimed that patients with "Covid-19" who were treated in the hospital and received ivermectin early reported a significant recovery, and that there was a significant improvement and decline in the mortality rate in the groups treated with ivermectin by 90%.
But Research Square pulled the study on Thursday "due to ethical concerns" and did not specify what those concerns were.
Education is a bit too big 😂
Dr..
Ahmed El-Gazzar from Benha University withdrew his study on the efficacy of ivermectin for ethical . reasons
Ironically, the study's introduction was found to have been stolen from multiple sources, changed the wording to mask the theft, and on his way changed the name of SARS to extreme intense respiratory syndrome
🙈 https://t.co/iMs6BcWbXw
— Khalid Jamal - Khalid Jamal (@clf2019) July 16, 2021
According to the Guardian report, Jack Lawrence, a medical student in London, was among the first to identify serious concerns about the paper.
He found that the introduction section of the paper appeared to be almost completely plagiarized.
The data also seemed suspicious to Lawrence, as the raw data appeared to conflict with the study's protocol on several occasions.
"The authors claimed to have conducted the study only on people between the ages of 18 and 80, but at least 3 patients in the data set were under 18," he says.
The authors claimed that they conducted the study between June 8 and September 20, 2020, but most patients who died were hospitalized and died before June 8, according to preliminary data.
The data is also terribly formatted, and includes one patient who left the hospital on a non-existent date 06/31/2020.
There were other data concerns.
Lawrence and the newspaper sent El-Gazzar a comprehensive list of questions about the data, but they did not receive a response.
The university's press office also did not respond.
What data are available about ivermectin and corona?
Currently, the US National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration, and the World Health Organization do not recommend the use of ivermectin as a treatment for coronavirus, except for clinical trials only.
So far, there are no recommendations for using this drug to treat "Covid-19".
In March, the WHO warned against the use of ivermectin outside of clinical trials. "Current evidence regarding the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 patients is still inconclusive," she said. Until more data is available, WHO recommends that the use of this drug be restricted to clinical trials.
The organization said that a team was formed to prepare guidance in this regard in response to the growing international interest in ivermectin as a possible treatment for "Covid-19". It is an independent international expert panel of multidisciplinary clinical care experts, ethicists and patient association partners.
The team reviewed data collected from 16 randomized controlled clinical trials (a total of 2,407 cases) that included both inpatient and outpatient COVID-19 patients.
It concluded that the evidence that ivermectin reduces the risk of death, the need for artificial respiration, the need for hospitalization, and the time it takes for patients to improve their clinical symptoms, is evidence of “a very low level of certainty” given the small volume of available clinical trial data and methodological limitations, including In that few events.
And a research paper published in Clinical Infectious Diseases in June found that ivermectin was “not a viable option” for treating Covid-19 patients.
Currently, the University of Oxford is testing whether giving people with "Covid-19" the drug ivermectin prevents them from needing to be hospitalized.
So, for the moment, it does not seem that ivermectin can treat corona, but research is being conducted on it.
How does ivermectin work?
According to a report by Dr. Perry Wilson, at Medscape, Ivermectin binds to certain chloride channels on nerve and muscle cells, paralyzing the parasite.
These channels are found in the nervous system of worms and insects, which is why the drug works.
Humans also have these channels, but only in our brains and spines.
Since ivermectin cannot cross the blood-brain barrier, which is also present in the spine, we are immune to its effects.
A group of professors in Benha Medicine (Egypt) published a research draft (not subject to review) in which they said that they had conducted a clinical trial and concluded that Ivermectin (worming drug) is effective in treating Covid-19. The
platform that published the research decided to withdraw it yesterday after discovering evidence of fabricated results and stolen paragraphs https://t.co/ZBsxAOK2Rs! pic.twitter.com/ioMa6jUjDY
— Islam Hussein (@virolvlog) July 16, 2021
How did the pioneers of social media interact?
Egyptian doctors called for Dr. Al-Butcher to be prosecuted because of the “fake study.” Tweeters said that what happened is a real scientific scandal for Egyptian universities that weakens their international credibility and harms Egyptian studies in particular, and that the study is based on experiences on a limited number of cases and was copied to increase the number, According to what was monitored by the Sanad Agency, Al-Jazeera network.
Others considered the theft of “usual” research in Egypt as an approach that university lecturers follow, as a formality to complete their studies, despite their intransigence with students.
It is worth noting that the Egyptian media celebrated the withdrawn study after it was published last November.