THREE MECHANISMS OF ACTION
Rarely is a drug discovered that works in so many different pathways as ivermectin. Ivermectin appears to work in at least three different ways to fight COVID-19. Those are: as an anti-inflammatory, as a block for the spike protein, and as an antiviral.
The following quote is from “Ivermectin, antiviral properties and COVID-19: a possible new mechanism of action,” an article in Naunyn-Schmiedeberg’s Archives of Pharmacology, the nearly 150-year old official journal of the German Society of Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology.
“Ivermectin is a versatile drug with unique characteristics, which make it interesting also for basic and applied research (in particular for drug repurposing): it seems to reveal an antibacterial … antiviral, and anticancer activity ….”
ANTI-INFLAMMATORY IVERMECTIN
The key word above is “versatile.” Ivermectin works on many different levels simultaneously. One surprising thing left out from the above list is “anti-inflammatory,” which is very important in the fight against COVID-19, as inflammation, such as that associated with cytokine storms, is a large part of the lethality of the disease.
“(T)he immune response during severe COVID-19 pneumonia may progress from inhibition of viral replication to inflammatory damage that continues despite viral control,” says this article published by the National Academy of Sciences. In other words, the COVID virus may stop multiplying in a patient but the real problem in the later stages of the disease can be the amount of inflammation in the body. If you have a drug that both inhibits the replication of the virus AND reduces inflammation, it can help both ways.
The article “Ivermectin may be a clinically useful anti-inflammatory agent for late-stage COVID-19,” published in the journal Open Heart, which is the official journal of the British Cardiovascular Society, is one of many that explore the anti-inflammatory qualities of ivermectin. “Hence, it is reasonable to suspect that, in doses at or modestly above the standard clinical dose, ivermectin may have important clinical potential for managing disorders associated with life-threatening respiratory distress and cytokine storm—such as advanced COVID-19. Ivermectin may have been ‘flying under the radar’ in this regard during four decades of clinical use.”
IVERMECTIN BLOCKS THE SPIKE PROTEIN
Ivermectin may block the attachment of the COVID virus spike protein to the ACE2 receptor in the human cell membrane, as explained in the article “Ivermectin Docks to the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Receptor-binding Domain Attached to ACE2,” published by in vivo, the journal of the International Institute of Anticancer Research. That research is also supported by this study which similarly found that ivermectin can inhibit the entry of COVID to the ACE2 receptor.
IVERMECTIN EXHIBITS ANTIVIRAL EFFECTS
Ivermectin is a broad-spectrum antiviral, particularly effective in vitro against RNA viruses such as Dengue virus. Scientists are attempting to see how effective it would be against Dengue in human populations, and the research is in its early stages. See the article Repurposing Ivermectin as an Anti-dengue Drug from Oxford University Press for example. In fact, ivermectin has been shown in cell cultures to be effective against at least 19 different viruses.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion we see three different ways that ivermectin may help a person fight off COVID-19: It is anti-inflammatory, it appears to block the spike protein’s connection to the ACE2 receptor, and it exhibits broad-spectrum antiviral effects.
