In 2015, the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine, in its only award for treatments of infectious diseases since six decades prior, honoured the discovery of ivermectin (IVM), a multifaceted drug deployed against some of the world's most devastating tropical diseases. Since March 2020...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
“Since March 2020, when IVM was first used against a new global scourge, COVID-19, more than 20 randomized clinical trials (RCTs) have tracked such inpatient and outpatient treatments. Six of seven meta-analyses of IVM treatment RCTs reporting in 2021 found notable reductions in COVID-19 fatalities, with a mean 31% relative risk of mortality vs. controls. During mass IVM treatments in Peru, excess deaths fell by a mean of 74% over 30 days in its ten states with the most extensive treatments.”
Scientists that developed IVM won the Nobel prize for medicine in 2015.
Overall, these drugs (IVM) have improved the lives of 3·4 billion people in some of the poorest parts of the world, according to the Nobel committee. “I don't think you can underestimate the importance of these drugs”, said Timothy Geary, director of the Institute of Parasitology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. “Both have revolutionized our ability to address significant global tropical diseases.”