Potential At-Home Treatment For Coronavirus

Potential At-Home Treatment For Coronavirus.

A potential at-home treatment for the potentially deadly coronavirus is being trialled.

Researchers hope that a new drug could potentially treat those with the coronavirus. The drug has previous been used to fight infections due to parasites. The drug called Ivermectin has been shown in lab tests to help reduce viral replication of the coronavirus and a pilot study showed that the drug may also help patients recover from mild Covid 19 quicker.

The University of Oxford are leading the Principle study which will look at how effective the possible treatment is. The drug has previously been used in both South Africa and Latin America during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Oxford researchers consider the drug to be controversial at the moment. So far there is “little evidence … to demonstrate that it can speed up recovery from the illness or reduce hospital admission” when tested in large-scale studies.

The study will see how effective the drug really is. Professor Chris Butler, from the University of Oxford’s Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences said: “Ivermectin is readily available globally, has been in wide use for many other infectious conditions so it’s a well known medicine with a good safety profile, and because of the early promising results in some studies it is already being widely used to treat Covid-19 in several countries.

“By including ivermectin in a large-scale trial like Principle, we hope to generate robust evidence to determine how effective the treatment is against Covid-19, and whether there are benefits or harms associated with its use.”

Anyone participating in the study will be given a three-day treatment and then monitored for a further 28 days. The data will be used to compare the results with those who have received standard care under the NHS.

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