KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's clinical trial study on the ineffectiveness of a five-day Ivermectin treatment in reducing the risk of developing severe illness from Covid-19 has been published in an international peer-reviewed medical journal.
The study, titled "Efficacy of Ivermectin Treatment on Disease Progression Among Adults With Mild to Moderate Covid-19 and Comorbidities" was published on Feb 18 in the JAMA Internal Medicine, a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association.
Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin, in sharing the news, congratulated the Institute for Clinical Research (ICR) (one of the research institutes under the ministry's National Institute of Health) and its director Dr Kalaiarasu Periasamy.
"Malaysia's clinical trial on Ivermectin's ineffectiveness in reducing severe Covid-19 has been published in an international peer-reviewed medical journal. Congratulations @drkalai61 (https://twitter.com/drkalai61) and @ICR_NIH (https://twitter.com/ICR_NIH)", Khairy tweeted.
The Ivermectin Treatment Efficacy in Covid-19 High-Risk Patients (I-TECH) study was an open-label randomised clinical trial conducted at 20 public hospitals and a Covid-19 quarantine centre in Malaysia between May 31 and Oct 25, 2021.
Within the first week of patients' symptom onset, the study enrolled patients 50 years and older with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19, comorbidities, and mild to moderate disease.
The I-TECH study, which involved 490 patients researched if adding ivermectin, an inexpensive and widely available antiparasitic drug, to the standard of care reduces the risk of severe disease in patients with Covid-19 and comorbidities.
The findings of this clinical trial found that a five-day course of oral ivermectin administered during the first week of illness did not reduce the risk of developing the severe disease compared with the standard of care alone.
"In this randomised clinical trial of high-risk patients with mild to moderate Covid-19, ivermectin treatment during early illness did not prevent progression to severe disease. The study findings do not support the use of ivermectin for patients with Covid-19," the study concluded.
Health director-general Tan Sri Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah had on Nov 3, 2021, said based on the outcomes of the I-TECH study, Ivermectin cannot be recommended for inclusion in the current Covid-19 treatment guidelines.
This, he said was because Ivermectin did not reduce the risk of severe Covid-19 disease.
Noor Hisham had said the results of the I-TECH study were in line with the large-scale studies such as IVERCOR-Covid-19 from Argentina and TOGETHER from Brazil that does not support the routine use of Ivermectin in the clinical practice of Covid-19 treatment.