Anti-Parasitic Drug, Ivermectin, Eliminates SARS-CoV-2 in Cells in 48 Hours

Scientists have demonstrated that a single dose of the drug, Ivermectin, could stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus growing in cell culture. Ivermectin is an FDA-approved anti-parasitic drug that has also been shown to be effective in vitro against a broad range of viruses including HIV, Dengue, Influenza and Zika virus. Although the mechanism by which Ivermectin works on the virus is not known, it is likely, based on its action in other viruses, that it works to stop the virus ‘dampening down’ the host cells’ ability to clear it. The next steps are to determine the correct human dosage – ensuring the doses shown to effectively treat the virus in vitro are safe for humans and its use to combat COVID-19 depends upon pre-clinical testing and clinical trials.

“We found that even a single dose could essentially remove all viral RNA by 48 hours and that even at 24 hours there was a really significant reduction in it,” said the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s Dr. Kylie Wagstaff, who led the study. “Ivermectin is very widely used and seen as a safe drug. We need to figure out now whether the dosage you can use it at in humans will be effective – that’s the next step.”

“As the virologist who was part of the team who were first to isolate and share SARS-COV2 outside of China in January 2020, I am excited about the prospect of Ivermectin being used as a potential drug against COVID-19,” said Royal Melbourne Hospital’s Dr. Leon Caly, a Senior Medical Scientist at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) at the Doherty Institute where the experiments with live coronavirus were conducted, is the study’s first author.

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