A team of Australian scientists from Monash University in Melbourne has effectively killed the SARS-CoV-2 virus in cell cultures in 48 hours using FDA-approved Ivermectin, which is widely available around the world.
Ivermectin is an anti-parasitic drug that has previously shown effective results against other viruses including HIV, Dengue, Influenza, and the Zika virus.
The Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute’s Dr. Kylie Wagstaff led the team study:
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. Ivermectin is very widely used and seen as a safe drug. We need to figure out now whether the dosage you can use it in humans will be effective – that’s the next step.
The scientists tested the antiviral activity by infecting Vero/hSLAM cells with SARS-CoV-2 isolate and then followed that with a single dose of Ivermectin. After just 24 hours they saw a 93% reduction of viral RNA present. A 99.8% reduction in cell-associated viral RNA took place by the 48th hour, leading the scientists to conclude “that ivermectin treatment resulted in the effective loss of essentially all viral material by 48 h.”
Dr. Leon Caly, first author of the study is a Senior Medical Scientist at the Victorian Infectious Diseases Reference Laboratory (VIDRL) at the Doherty Institute talks about the drug:
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.
The scientists did not encounter any toxicity form using the Ivermectin at any concentration. After their initial results, they re-tested the effectiveness, using cells infected from SARS-CoV-2. They used serial dilutions of Ivermectin two hours after infection and “supernatant and cell pellets collected for real-time RT-PCR at 48 h.” The viral RNA saw a reduction of greater than 5000 in both samples by treating them with a 5 μM ivermectin at 48 h, which equated to a 99.98% reduction in viral RNA.
The research, published in Antiviral Research states: “Taken together these results demonstrate that ivermectin has antiviral action against the SARS-CoV-2 clinical isolate in vitro, with a single dose able to control viral replication within 24-48 h in our system.”
As the team points out the development of an effective anti-viral for SARS-CoV-2 if given to patients early, may help to “limit the viral load,” limit a person to person transmission, and prevent severe progression. A vaccine is not likely to be widely available for quite some time, which is why a treatment to slow the virus down is important as Dr. Wagstaff explains:
In times when we’re having a global pandemic and there isn’t an approved treatment, if we had a compound that was already available around the world then that might help people sooner. Realistically it’s going to be a while before a vaccine is broadly available.
The team said that this treatment and any others that show promise should be pursued as rapidly as possible in clinical trials to see how effective they would be for humans. Dr. Wagstaff has been working with and researching Ivermectin for more than 10 years. She and Professor David Jans from the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute had a breakthrough discovery in 2012 when they identified Ivermectin’s anti-viral properties.
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