Global trends in clinical trials of ivermectin for COVID-19—Part 2

抄録

In the review article contributed by the authors to this journal in March of 2021, 91 clinical trials of ivermectin for COVID-19 from 27 countries around the world registered in public registries were described. At that time, 18 of the studies (13 being randomized controlled trials) had been published. Two years and nine months later, trial description enrollment has increased to 169 studies from 39 countries and includes 47 randomized controlled trials that have been peer-reviewed and published in medical journals. In addition to these registered trials, the results of 54 clinical trials not registered in public registries are also reported. This review provides an overview of these 223 clinical trials and summarizes and analyzes the results of 101 trials that have been reported.

In addition, as many as 27 systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been conducted on 69 articles from 24 countries in those trial results. Among them, 15 of the analyses demonstrated ivermectin efficacy, while 12 were unable to demonstrate efficacy. As a result of analyzing the differences between these meta-analyses, we concluded that COVID-19 itself, the target disease, has changed over time. Therefore, it is no longer appropriate as a target disease for meta-analysis, unlike other chronic diseases.

Among the study results provided for analysis in this review, several trials of importance were found to have serious errors or deviations in protocol violations: changes during the actual conduct of the study itself, blinding, placebo setting issues, and how papers were written. Furthermore, we are concerned about the spread of misinformation and/or disinformation regarding the execution and results of tests; a forthcoming review article will address this topic.