Health Blogs (951)

In response to: You may have seen ads on television for Heartgard, which prevents heartworm disease in dogs, and treats and controls intestinal worms in animals. One of two active ingredients in Heartgard is ivermectin.

Ivermectin is a broad spectrum anti-parasitic, with approved uses in animals and humans. The drug was developed in the late 1970s. In veterinary medicine, it is indicated to prevent and treat heartworm. In humans, ivermectin is indicated for, among other conditions, two neglected tropical diseases, river blindness (onchocerciasis) and lymphatic filariasis.

Bizarrely, in right-wing political circles, ivermectin has become increasingly popular as an antidote to Covid-19. The drug is embroiled in a Covid-19 culture war that pits (as yet) unproven treatments against proven measures, such as vaccines. On Friday, August 27th, in a speech at the Texas Youth Summit, Representative Louie Gohmert touted ivermectin as an effective treatment for Covid-19, despite there being no substantiated scientific evidence to back this up.

Gohmert is not alone in spreading misinformation. Social media is rife with assertions that ivermectin is beneficial for preventing and treating Covid-19. As a result, in a number of states poison control centers are being inundated with calls from people who’ve taken ivermectin and are experiencing severe adverse effects. In response, the Food and Drug Administration has been urging people not to ingest ivermectin, with colorful tweets like this one: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”

Many talking heads have taken to the airwaves to decry what appears to be irrational behavior on the part of ivermectin enthusiasts. Rachel Maddow of MSNBC said: “Literally people won’t take the vaccine because they’re super suspicious of that, but they’re taking horse deworming medication that they’re buying at a feed store.”

The unfolding ivermectin culture war is reminiscent of last year’s polarizing debate on hydroxychloroquine. Hydroxychloroquine is another rather old drug, indicated for malaria. Like ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine is on the World Health Organization’s essential drug list. Essential medicines support the priority healthcare needs of patients, particularly in developing nations, and are selected based on their public health relevance, evidence of safety and efficacy, and comparative cost-effectiveness.

Of all drugs right-wingers would have gravitated to, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are most unusual candidates, in that they’re largely used in humans in developing nations for conditions rarely seen in the U.S.

All the talk of ivermectin being a deworming agent for animals doesn’t do justice to its crucial role in combating two devastating neglected tropical diseases in humans: River blindness and lymphatic filariasis. These diseases impose a significant burden on public health, especially in developing nations.

In 1987, the pharmaceutical company Merck established the Mectizan (ivermectin) donation program. This program is considered an exemplar among drug donation arrangements. Three hundred million people have been treated with ivermectin, donated by Merck in more than 30 countries.
So, ivermectin has proven human uses, but Covid-19 is not one of them. And, the company that manufactures ivermectin, Merck, has explicitly stated this. There are several ongoing clinical trials involving ivermectin as a possible treatment of Covid-19. But, at present there aren’t any validated data on ivermectin’s efficacy against Covid-19 in people.

In response to: CLAIM: Newly leaked emails among Pfizer employees show that the company’s COVID-19 vaccine contains fetal cells.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The emails cited say that the vaccine was tested, not produced, using a cell line that originated with a fetus in the 1970s. That information was already publicly available.

THE FACTS: A widely shared video by the group Project Veritas has led to a false claim online that purported emails among Pfizer officials show that the pharmaceutical company’s COVID-19 vaccine contains aborted fetal cells.

But the video — an interview between Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and a self-identified Pfizer employee who claims to show internal emails from the company — does not support that erroneous conclusion.

Instead, it shows that the company used a fetal cell line when testing the efficacy of its vaccine. Cell lines, which are key to medical research, are cloned copies of cells from the same source that have been adapted to grow continuously in labs.

Nevertheless, users spread the falsehood about the contents of the vaccine widely on social media with references to religious exemptions.

“You are mandated to inject dead babies into your body,” one Twitter account sharing the video falsely claimed. “Fetal cells in the vaccines yet they are denying people religious exemptions.”

A Facebook post citing the video made the false allegation that Pfizer had “failed to disclose the use of several aborted fetal cell lines, including the HEK 293 (from experiment 293) used in the research, development and production of their vaccine. They don’t want the public to know they used cells from aborted fetuses, so that your religious exemptions are denied.”

At the heart of the widely shared video spurring the false claims are purported emails among Pfizer officials from early 2021. The messages displayed show an alleged conversation about the company’s reluctance to publicize that testing of its vaccine — not production — used a cell line that was originally derived from fetal tissue.

One of the main emails cited specifically says, “Human fetal derived cell lines are not used to produce our investigational vaccine, which consists of synthetic and enzymatically produced components.” It adds: “One or more cell lines with an origin that can be traced back to human fetal tissue has been used in laboratory tests associated with the vaccine program.”

The video also shows an email referencing the HEK293T cell line — or Human Embryonic Kidney 293 — which was first established in the early 1970s using cells from a kidney of a fetus.

What’s not made clear in the video is that it is already public record that Pfizer’s vaccine was tested using such cells.

In a paper published in September 2020 detailing the vaccine’s development and success in mice and monkeys, Pfizer and BioNTech scientists said that the vaccine had been tested using the HEK293T cell line.
The conference recommended that, in the absence of a vaccine with no connection at all to such a cell line, vaccines that use them “only for testing would be preferable to those that use such cell lines for ongoing production.”

“There are no components of fetal cells in the vaccine, and none used in manufacturing,” Dr. Saahir Khan, an assistant clinical professor of infectious diseases at the University of Southern California, said in a phone interview about the Pfizer shot.

Khan said it is very common to use such cell lines somewhere along the way in the research or development of vaccines and other medicine for humans. He said such cell lines, started decades ago, are grown in labs — so the cells being used for research are not the original cells.

In response to:

'Every one of those deaths is unnecessary,' expert says of rising Covid-19 US death toll as tens of millions remain unvaccinated

By Travis Caldwell, CNN

Updated 4:20 PM ET, Sun October 3, 2021

(CNN)With a first-of-its-kind antiviral pill against Covid-19 potentially headed towards distribution, the health care community may soon have another tool to combat a virus that has claimed the lives of more than 700,000 Americans.
Merck and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics created an antiviral pill the companies say can reduce risk of Covid-19 hospitalization and death by 50%, and Merck said it will seek emergency use authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its molnupiravir medication "as soon as possible."

"We'll be able to prescribe this to folks. They'll take a five-day course and hopefully be able to stay home, not come in for an intravenous infusion and keep folks out of the hospital. So, it's really very promising news," Dr. Jonathan Reiner, CNN medical analyst and professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University, told CNN's Pamela Brown Saturday.

But the best strategy for fighting the pandemic -- full immunization -- is still hampered due to resistance, Reiner noted, and a substantial number of Americans have died since late February, when vaccine access expanded.

"We've lost 700,000 Americans now and fully 200,000 of those folks have died since vaccines have been available almost to everyone in this country, and every one of those deaths is unnecessary," he said. "So even though the news is great for this antiviral agent, really the message that people need to receive is 'get vaccinated.' No one needs to die from this virus."

As progress slowly moves forward nationwide with the rate of inoculations, tens of millions of unvaccinated Americans remain at higher risk for Covid-19.
Nearly 56% of the total US population, or 65.4% of those ages 12 and up who are eligible, are fully vaccinated, according to data published Sunday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

However, fifteen states have yet to fully vaccinate more than half of their residents, according to CDC data: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wyoming.

While much of the focus from health experts and officials remains on new inoculations that will help lower hospitalization rates, booster shots for some people previously fully vaccinated with the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine are gaining traction, with about 5.3 million people who have received an additional dose -- or booster -- since August 13, CDC data shows.
People ages 65 and older, people at high risk of severe disease and people whose jobs put them at risk of infection may get an additional dose.
Appearing on ABC's "This Week" Sunday morning, Dr. Anthony Fauci addressed people who remain hesitant about the vaccines, believing they are too new, saying, "This vaccine has been given to hundreds of millions of people ... throughout the world, so although it is 'new,' there is a lot of experience with this vaccine."
"It's within our capability to make sure that that turnaround we're seeing ... continues to go down," he said of the country finally turning a corner in the pandemic. "We can do that, really, by getting vaccinated."

While the Delta variant has contributed to more Covid-19 infections in children compared to earlier in the pandemic, recent studies show certain mitigation measures are still effective tools in lowering infections -- underscoring the importance of these strategies while children under the age of 12 remain ineligible to receive a Covid-19 vaccine.