Following publication of the column Ivermectin: a Covid tool being dismissed on Tuesday, earlier attempts to seek a response from the Ministry of Health led to contact with specialists able to provide expert commentary on the topic. Dr McArthur provided this response in consultation with Dr Susan Morpeth, a clinical microbiologist and infectious disease physician at Middlemore Hospital:
Assessing the totality of evidence regarding a medical treatment requires evaluation of the quality of the studies as well as their results. It is all too easy to get unreliable results and draw incorrect conclusions from poorly designed studies. However, there are well-established standards to assess the trustworthiness of studies.
For COVID-19 treatments, many countries and organisations set up processes to evaluate and synthesise the evidence as it became available.
These independently conducted evaluations of the evidence regarding ivermectin from Australia, UK, USA, Canada, the World Health Organisation and the Cochrane Collaboration are all consistent in recommending against the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19 clinically, but with some also stating that its use in an approved clinical trial would be acceptable.
As there are some clinical trials which are yet to report, it is possible that these recommendations could change in the future, but in the meantime ivermectin should not be used.
