From my own experience I can very much believe an SSRI could have an effect on the immune system and/or the respiratory system.
I was a heavy cigarette smoker in my 20s, and over those years, I experienced worsening asthma and also worsening anxiety and depression.
Eventually I was prescribed an SSRI (Zoloft), and found that not only did my mood change, my asthma completely abated, even though I was still smoking just as much.
After a few months I decided I didn't like all that the SSRI was doing to my psyche, so when the prescription finished I tapered off it, and sure enough the asthma returned a few months later.
I've never enquired much as to what what was going on - I didn't speak to doctors or other people about it. But the correlation between SSRI intake and asthma abatement was very clear.
(And yes I know it was very stupid to be smoking as an asthmatic - I quit completely the following year and have stayed off them for coming-on 15 years. I've also been mostly asthma-free in that time, though it returned for a few months about 7 years ago, after a period of intense career-related stress, but then cleared up after I undertook some healing work that included both immune-system support and emotional healing.)
i actually have the opposite problem certain ssri's have made my asthma really bad so that's interesting to hear how different people respond to different medications
There are other known links between emotion and asthma. For example, children are more likely to develop asthma if they grow up with a parent who is depressed or high-stress.
my AD/immune system anecdote: I have an autoimmune disease. Some ADs make the disease flare up. Some (particularly tricyclics) improve the disease's symptoms.
No SSRI's are antihistaminergic. It is right in the name. SSRI only inhibit serotonin reuptake. Many antipsychotics have histamine receptor inhibition, but there are no antidepressants that block the histamine receptors.
If you continue having issues, consider taking NAC. It's very commonly used to treat bronchitis and my asthmatic mother has had tremendous success with it.
More broadly, there is a lot of emerging evidence against directly taking antioxidant supplements. For example, it is well established that antioxidant supplementation counteracts the benefits of exercise in humans (free radicals are a cue the body uses to initiate recovery). https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/NFS-03-2.... You can find similar articles/studies for other antioxidants.
I'm not sure you can apply those findings regarding antioxidants. NAC isn't itself an antioxidant, but a prodrug for an amino acid that is the rate limiting factor in producing glutathione, the bodies primary endogenous antioxidant. Presumably if you're already "full" on glutathione, the NAC does nothing.
I am not sure how well known it is, but I already have known this. Immunostimulants are not necessary a healthy thing either, especially not for people with an autoimmune disorder. It can cause flare-ups for example. There is a case of a woman whose condition deteriorated rapidly after having consumed some common herbs and died within a day or two. I think she had MS.
Another example: it has been known that many substances do prevent, but if you already have cancer, than your condition will worsen.
Back to NAC: it is healthy for you in the typical doses which is about 200-1000 mg I would say. If you take acetaminophen on the daily, then it is especially recommended.
In any case, I do not recommend taking it long-term, or not without breaks in-between. Take it for 2 months, stop for a month, take it for another 2 months, then stop for a month and so forth. You can do 1 month on then off, and so on. Up to you.
>There is a case of a woman whose condition deteriorated rapidly after having consumed some common herbs and died within a day or two. I think she had MS.
I'm so, so glad I can finally downvote friend-of-a-friend rumourmongering like this. Maybe this is something legitimate, but handwaving an entire anecdote on a forum like this, with no definite information except "a case" involving "a woman" and her "condition", is baffling.
Maybe don't listen to this user's suggestions about NAC without verifying something about it, which was too much trouble for them.
I am too lazy to look for it. It is on PubMed. In any case, there are many cases of n=1 on HN. Plus, it is not unheard of that immunostimulants may be quite harmful for people with an autoimmune disorder, say, MS. I merely mentioned this case because it is an odd one. She was fine. She took some herbs, and her condition worsened until she died like a day after. I will never forget it. Too bad I cannot seem to find it.
>In any case, there are many cases of n=1 on HN. Plus, it is not unheard of that immunostimulants may be quite harmful for people with an autoimmune disorder, say, MS.
That's not the point! Perhaps it is on PubMed, but with the FUD-like "information" you've provided it's just a scary rumour about "herbs", and entirely unhelpful. Is MS even the illness at issue? Should people with that illness avoid cilantro? Milk thistle? Oregano?
So to answer your question: The formulation of tablets (labelled as ‘immunostimulant’) consisted of Echinacea purpurea 45 mg, Uncaria tomentosa 37.5 mg, and Tabebuia avellanedae and Plantago maritima 30 mg.
I only remembered the Echinacea one. It actually has been an issue in many of these cases, so I avoid it. As I said, immunostimulants for people with autoimmune disorder are usually not good. Immunomodulators can be, but that depends as well. For example allicin and propolis reduce production of inflammatory cytokines such as IL-6 and TNF-α, which from what I recall is good for MS.
“ There is a case of a woman whose condition deteriorated rapidly after having consumed some common herbs and died within a day or two. I think she had MS.”
Sadly I cannot remember. The story stuck with me because of the quick deterioration. Unfortunately I cannot even remember enough to find it! :(
I have MS as well. Propolis seems to be fine as immunomodulation goes. I also take ALA. There are conflicting results with regarding to resveratrol. You could take a look at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6311642/ if you have not yet done so.
Cheers. I take a small selection of supplements - mostly minerals/vitamins and digestive support but also some amino acids. Not NAC these days, but I may again. My main antioxidant supplement at the moment is Alpha-lipoic Acid.
FDA banned OTC NAC sales after it found out it might help with COVID [1]. Can't have that. And yeah, I know you're suggesting it for something else, but it's hard to get now.
The FDA didn't ban it: it just cannot be marketed as a health supplement. Mostly because it was originally approved as a drug back in the 1960s. It would be like selling Tylenol as a vitamin. A dumb technicality that'll likely be reversed.
There are many brands listed on iHerb (all with "dietary supplement" prominently listed in the product description), though most of the items are marked "out of stock", so it looks like many people have been stocking up.
Well, no. It appears that the FDA became aware of companies marketing N-acetyl-L-cysteine as a hangover remedy and started the process of taking action at that point. And once they start taking action, they can't ignore some off-label uses for something that's considered a drug. And while this action started in the middle of 2020, there's no evidence that this decision had anything to do with research around the drug and COVID.
It does seem to work as a hangover preventative provided you take it before starting to drink alcohol. (Somewhere between 15 minutes to a few hours before.)
I think they re-classified it and it's no longer available over the counter. As far as I'm aware it was not banned entirely. I wouldn't know, I stocked up considerably right after the ban, before it disappeared from online stores (but after it already disappeared from Amazon). I figure they wouldn't ban it if it didn't work, like most supplements.
NAC is amazing! We have it available here OTC. I wanted to get in higher quantities from the US but I might not be able to do that, then.
Check this random factoid out: "After about two weeks of 2,400mg NAC supplementation, cigarette usage appears to be reduced voluntarily by around 25%."
I personally take it for my liver. It does wonders to it, similarly to silybilin.
Also note the absence of that sweet/sickly smell on one's breath. This implies a reduced level of circulating acetaldehyde, the primary carcinogen associated with alcohol consumption.
Glad to see this being spoken about! I’ve been assisting with data analysis for an eclectic group of people (who funded this study).
Been really disheartening to watch the politics around alternative treatments. Personally, I expect this to be attacked as well, but am hopeful! The stuff really does seem effective, particularly when combined with other drugs...
If it’s a good study, you probably want it to be scrutinized. If it holds up in other studies that it works, congrats, we just did science! If it doesn’t, it’s just a belief that it works.
There are many problems here... from monetary (all the pharmaceutical companies want a new, expensive drug, and not something old and cheap), to political (who wan't to deal with another experimental drug, after all the contraversy about the others), to political2 (who want's to be a antivax hero, cited by all the virus deniers), to risky (whatever you publish, all of your previous and future work will be scuritinized by everyone, and one small rounding mistake ina paper you wrote 20 years ago might destroy your career), etc.
It's a lot easier to work on AnotherCure(TM) for baldness, than touch this pile of political crap.
That sounds like it works like that, but that is not always the case. They do try out promising could be medicines, especially since Covid costs enough as-is.
There is no such thing as alternative medicine. If the drug is tested and found to be effective then it is medicine. But you must expect rigorous analysis and provide significant evidence to support you claims. This is how it works. If you can't handle it then you are in 'alternative' medicine, which is not real.
I think you misread, I said “alternative treatments”, there definitely can be alternative treatment methods to the main method. For instance, some people can’t take Tylenol, so they take Ibuprofen. It’s an alternative treatment to handle pain.
I understand what you’re referring in terms of “alternative medicine”, but that’s it’s own genre.
"Alternative treatment" implies an unapproved, off-label use. Maybe you meant "promising therapeutic" or something along those lines? Throwing around the term "alternative" is dicey, especially in a world where people take advice about COVID vaccines and "alternative treatments" from podcasts hosted by former comedians.
Once enough studies have been done, this off-label use for fluvoxamine will likely be blessed by the agencies that regulate these sorts of things and at that point it will become an approved treatment for long COVID symptoms. Most things spoken of as "alternative treatments" don't even get to the first stage of this process (since they can't be substantiated with evidence).
Joe rogan explained what his doc gave him. He’s also had multiple doctors and researchers on his show providing information regarding treatments they are attempting. Frankly, Ivermectin and the like have more research than the vaccine, they’ve been deployed for longer and at least passed phase 1 trials, which the vaccine has not (only preliminary results).
In terms of “off-label” drugs, the FDA approval process is there to protect against liability. Effectively, the government accepts some liability and in return medical companies get some protections. It’s highly likely you’ve taken drugs “off label” yourself.
Thus far, this research is promising. Similar to other treatments / therapeutics to covid19, and it has a known risk profile. Making it a potentially better alternative to the standard approach (stay hydrated if infected and vaccinate ahead of time if possible)
> Ivermectin and the like have more research than the vaccine
That's very very unlikely. Even considering the Nobel prize for it. Simply because the sheer scale of the pandemic.
There are more vaccines in development and use against COVID than there are Ivermectin clinical trials in total.
> they’ve been deployed for longer and at least passed phase 1 trials, which the vaccine has not (only preliminary results).
That doesn't mean they are not safe. The phase 1 trials run to 2022 Nov, because there's a long follow up period.
Nothing can guarantee that there's not some mysterious missed interaction. It's probability is low and getting lower day-by-day. This tail risk is just not that important for safety. It makes very little sense to emphasize this, because we also don't know the long term interaction of Ivermectin and COVID-19.
>In terms of “off-label” drugs, the FDA approval process is there to protect against liability. Effectively, the government accepts some liability and in return medical companies get some protections. It’s highly likely you’ve taken drugs “off label” yourself.
Off label drug use/ approval isn't about government liability. As far as I know, it has none. The noteworthy exception is the vaccine's, where the government has a special injury compensation fund, but I wouldn't call this liability . It IS about manufacturer liability, and insurance reimbursement.
OP said alternative treatment. Presumably they meant an alternative to the treatments currently en vogue versus faith healing or some such thing.
Also, it sounds like they are involved with people who are working on providing evidence...I'm not clear what is causing your criticism.
Ivermectin has been tested and proven time and time again to be a safe and effective treatment for early covid, yet it's constantly attacked and suppressed by the non-alternative crowd, seemingly for political purposes.
I've developed a sort of morbid curiosity around how everything now gets politicized. Looking at the comments here, it seems like it is currently up in the air. I can see it going at least two ways: the way of invermectin, where it is ridiculed by blue tribe and favoured by red, or the opposite could happen due to the antidepressant/sexual dysfunction angle, it may be demonized by the red tribe (e.g. as part of a scheme to turn population into sheep and curb reproduction) but hailed as an alternative that actually works to invermectin by the blue tribe.
I hope this isn't attacked, because this isn't an "alternative" drug.
Things move from "alternative medicine" to being "medicine" when people do good, peer-reviewed science to actually study the effects and find them to be effective. "Alternative medicine" like ivermectine or hydroxychloroquine have no scientific, properly studied basis for being used.
Things go from “under investigation” medicine to medicine once good peer reviewed science shows them to be effective.
If the peer reviewed research shows them to not be effective, and if snake oil salesmen figure out a business model to fleece people with it, that’s when it becomes “alternative” medicine.
I am somewhat curious how many products used in scams were not actually scams themselves. Meaning, the molecule had benefits but the people pushing it were shady and deceptive exaggerating claims of beneifts so now people psychologically associate the word with a scam or quackery. I ask this as someone that consumes Krill Oil, Coconut Oil, Oregano Oil and misc other oils.
>"Alternative medicine" like ivermectine or hydroxychloroquine have no scientific, properly studied basis for being used.
When a medical doctor prescribes a drug for a purpose that is currently being studied scientifically, that is not "alternative medicine". Ivermectin is still being studied. Hydroxychloroquine was emergency authorized by the FDA.
I've read a debunking of that as well, which was basically that the study uses poisonously high levels of HCQ (much higher than normal or required), and that it uses no zinc. Zinc is the actual virus killer, HCQ just lets in into the cell (it's a zinc ionophore).
This is a distressingly common technique for making studies say what you want them to say. I've dug into several dietary studies over the years claiming how this or that diet is good or bad for you, and a lot of them basically involve feeding the worst-possible $DIET_X to one set of mice and the best possible $DIET_Y to the other, and lo, $DIET_Y wins. So, for instance, you can feed a "low carb" diet that fills in the fats with a ton of transfats or with good fats, and you can feed a "high carb" diet that has a lot of whole grains or has a whole lot of bleached, refined flour, and produce whichever results you want. This is a non-trivial part of the reason why "peer reviewed" studies keep continuously putting out what seems like contradictory results.
Unfortunately, it means just "trusting a peer reviewed study" is even harder than it should be. You have to dig into the study to see if it even makes any sense which can be very difficult. And you have to follow the money, not "even" if the study says what you think it ought to say, but especially when it says what you want it to say.
I actually think it might be a good example because it highlights the distinction between "medicine" and "alternative medicine": approval for use. Many drugs have been approved for a use in the past, only to be superseded by better drugs or found to be dangerous or ineffective.
Take for example acetaminophen (aka paracetamol/tylenol): it is borderline ineffective, has been superseded by ibuprofen for almost all use cases, and the required dosage for its tiny effect is also very close to dangerous levels. Yet it is still the go-to drug of parents, GPs and hospitals for a range of ailments from the common cold to post-operative pain. "Good old paracetamol" is in every medicine cabinet in the Western world. I've told my folks a hundred times that it simply doesn't work, but they use it for pretty much any condition. Mum even gave it to her old dog. It's trusted like oxo cubes, Campbell's soup or a nice cup of tea. And that's why it's the foremost cause of acute liver failure in the Western world. While it hasn't had it's approval removed yet, I wouldn't be surprised if it did some day, and I doubt it would be approved today if it were being introduced.
Even so: is it still very much "medicine", not "alternative medicine".
>> Take for example acetaminophen (aka paracetamol/tylenol): it is borderline ineffective, has been superseded by ibuprofen for almost all use cases, and the required dosage for its tiny effect is also very close to dangerous levels.
This is only really accurate in a small window of analysis. It's been shown that paracetamol + ibuprofen has synergistic effects for most pain-related issues and paracetamol is superior to ibuprofen for migraine headaches; furthermore, the obvious correct headache drug of choice is aspirin/paracetamol/caffeine, aka Excedrin, which is vastly superior to ibuprofen.
I won't argue that paracetamol has acute liver toxicity issues (the largest drug of overdose problems, though a lot of this is intentional rather than accidental), but ibuprofen is abused in a chronic fashion with buildup over time leading to renal failure and worse (pro/amateur athletes are particularly at risk of chronic abuse issues).
I won't argue that paracetamol is way more dangerous than people think, and there should be far more warning labels (which J&J fights against), but I would be genuinely shocked if it got its approval revoked; similarly, I'd expect it to be approved if it was around today as well - especially if we knew about the synergistic effects it has with aspirin and caffeine.
> When a medical doctor prescribes a drug for a purpose that is currently being studied scientifically, that is not "alternative medicine".
It really is, as there is absolutely no evidence it has any effect whatsoever and at best it only serves as a placebo. In short, it's snake oil. Worse: politically-motivated snake oil.
> Are the people participating in the scientific studies of the drug participating in alternative medicine?
Please let me know when a reputable study that undergoes peer review in an established and respected journal reports that the drug does work as their fans and militants claim.
Until then, keep in mind that "alternative" in "alternative medicine" stands for "hand-waving". As the old adage goes, alternative medicine that works does have a special name. It's called medicine.
> Please let me know when a reputable study that undergoes peer review in an established and respected journal reports that the drug does work as their fans and militants claim.
There is one ongoing right now: Oxford University's PRINCIPLE trial. Until results of that trial are reported, about the only accurate thing anyone can say is that current evidence is ambiguous.
Complementary and alternative medicines (CAMs) are treatments that fall outside of mainstream healthcare.
> Are the people participating in the scientific studies of the drug participating in alternative medicine?
Well the placebo group taking sugar pills for their cancer are not exactly going 'by the book' or lamestream healthcare and the active group taking whatever ... well lets just agree to disagree shall we?
This epidemiologist points out several major flaws with that website. For one, the website selectively picks the best result from each paper, which results in the website aggregating a bunch of unrelated measurements, including measurements that were not even each paper's main outcome/measurement. https://twitter.com/GidMK/status/1422044335076306947
" Ivermectin is currently not approved in the UK for the prophylaxis or treatment of COVID-19," [1]
There are no good studies demonstrating the validity of Ivermectin, and the Oxford study is not complete and there's no indication results are positive.
Why are people so crazy about this drug?
It doesn't look like it works, though there is some possibility it will, but we'll only know when the Oxford trial is complete. Given the knowledge we have today, it just isn't a therapy for COVID.
> It doesn't look like it works, though there is some possibility it will, but we'll only know when the Oxford trial is complete. Given the knowledge we have today, it just isn't a therapy for COVID.
There's a big trial ongoing, and the rest of the evidence is mixed. You can't say that "it doesn't look like it works"...we just don't know.
I personally put the prior probability of any intervention working for any illness at a very low number, but too many people are eager to dismiss things -- or accept them -- before they've been tested.
It's disturbing, and is mostly about politics. Many of the same people who dismiss Ivermectin for low-quality evidence eagerly seize upon any dubious shred of evidence for their favored interventions, and enact widespread mandates.
'Non results' from 'not good studies' are negative indicators - not 'neutral' indicators. That's they key thing to understand.
If Ivermectin did work, it should show up, but it's not.
We're doing the Oxford trial really because of some shady information and results, that could possibly indicate that there's some theraputic value. Not because people have high hopes.
Here is Merk's statement:
" It is important to note that, to-date, our analysis has identified:
No scientific basis for a potential therapeutic effect against COVID-19 from pre-clinical studies;
No meaningful evidence for clinical activity or clinical efficacy in patients with COVID-19 disease, and;
A concerning lack of safety data in the majority of studies."
While it would be good if the Oxford trials showed something, they probably won't.
> Non results' from 'not good studies' are negative indicators - not 'neutral' indicators. That's they key thing to understand.
No, that's a thing you made up. The biggest problem with the "not good studies" of Ivermectin is that they've been underpowered or poorly controlled. The efficacy signal ranges from neutral to strongly positive, but the neutral signal could be due to under-powered studies. The positive results could be due to confounders. Neither are "negative indicators". That's silly. It's like saying that having weak efficacy data for a drug in vitro is a "negative indicator" prior to trials. Any efficacy data is a positive indicator. Some positive indicators are stronger than others.
The Merck quote is an opinion. They're entitled to their opinion, but it's not definitive.
The point is: we'll see. You don't need to predict the future. You can just wait for the data. Science is great that way. Everything else is politics.
It's disturbing how this topic is treated like a tribalistic team sport. Comments like yours seem to follow "Rules for Radicals"[0], such as rules 5 and, especially, 13:
"Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."
"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
You practically invent your own enemies to knock down.
Your reasoning would apply equally well to almost any acknowledgement that there are any differences at all between any two groups on any given subject.
>"Alternative medicine" like ivermectine or hydroxychloroquine have no scientific, properly studied basis for being used.
There are more than 60 peer reviewed studies showing positive effect for ivermectin. Similarly the single trial that the media touted as "proof" that HCQ did not work administered what amounted to an overdose to terminally ill patients, in contrast to the recommended early/prophylactic regimen.
These lies have gone on for far too long - no thanks to irresponsible and, frankly, inexcusable censorship by fb, youtube et al on grounds of "misinformation".
This site[0] has been up for over a year now and the citation count has continued to grow.
It seems people are more interested in poo pooing proponents of ivermectin/HCQ than actually examining evidence. Medicine should not be a political team sport.
There are multiple trials showing HCQ didn’t work. It was heavily studied and bombed over and over again in all 3 contexts: prophylaxis, early treatment, and treatment of hospitalized patients.
Just use google directly to find the trials I’m talking about, instead of being blinded by the ivm meta site creators (who created a similar site last year for HCQ). IvmMeta mixes in poor quality studies with studies that actually found no significant effect for IVM and claims they all are pro IVM.
> There are more than 60 peer reviewed studies showing positive effect for ivermectin.
I couldn't help but notice your use of purposely vague and misleading weasel words such as "positive effect".
Meanwhile I recall reading one of those ivermectin studies presented on another discussion on HN, and it certainly raised some red flags regarding how it was put together. For instance, if my memory doesn't fail me, it relied on an astonishingly small sample (100 patients, all reported as mild cases, divided into control and treatment) and to make matters worse the control group was given hydroxychloroquine instead of a placebo, effectively comparing ivermectin to hydroxychloroquine.
In the end the study reported that the fatality rate in the control and treatment groups was the same, and the only claim was that the statistical analysis suggested more patients from the ivermectin group were discharged earlier, which could very well be just statistical noise. Other than this the paper reported no benefit at all.
So, this is what weasel words buy: they are used to hide facts and misguide people. So unless you actually substantiate your claims and point exactly the very best study you feel shows that said "positive effect" is and how it was quantified, I have to dismiss your claim as something between a baseless assertion and blatant misinformation.
So you start by accusing him of being purposely misleading. He mentions 60 studies (which he didn't cite specifically, but at least offered a link which one could use to verify his claims).
But then you pull a bait-and-switch in your own comment, complaining about just one study, which you completely neglect to cite (so it could be made up, for all we know). You subtly outsource your opinion, trying to lend it an air of objectivity by saying that it "raised some red flags" (after you accused him of using weasel words). You couch the whole comment in an air of faux fairness by writing as if you are some judge called upon to arbitrate a dispute, who just has to rule a certain way because, of course, that's what the evidence requires. And you imply that your unsourced complaint about one study invalidates all such studies, therefore he must be wrong.
You accused him of being purposely misleading, but at least he offered a link, and he didn't try to trick people into thinking that a criticism of one thing invalidates other things, which you did.
Your whole comment is a textbook example of propaganda techniques. And then you wonder why people don't know what to believe anymore. It's like the whole Internet is a political, psychological battleground for public mindshare, and the truth doesn't matter at all.
> So you start by accusing him of being purposely misleading. He mentions 60 studies
I did more than that: I pointed out not only the use of weasel words but also that no assertion is substantiated in what boils down to a baseless appeal to authority.
Consequently, it's critical that, for the sake of objectiveness and to avoid spreading misinformation, these personal assertions cannot be backed up by handwaving and instead must be supported by concrete evidence, such as references to said studies, if they exist at all.
It's not very helpful to just describe a study you simply recall based on memory. If you have an actual link to it, myself and others may take you more seriously.
> It's not very helpful to just describe a study you simply recall based on memory.
Actually it is. The whole point of that was to illustrate the importance of actually looking into what these papers actually said, if they exist at all, instead of pulling the appeal to authority card with numbers pulled out of thin air.
The OP asserted that ivermectin worked. He proceeded to state that 60 papers report it. Well... Where are they? Can anyone like me actually take a look at one of these supposedly decisive papers? I'd be happy if I could just check the best one out of the hypothetical 60.
Are you being intentionally obtuse? I linked you a compendium of 60 papers. Surely you can cherry pick one or two and claim poor quality.
>I couldn't help but notice your use of purposely vague and misleading weasel words such as "positive effect".
This isn't a weasel word, this is exactly the correct term to capture the uncertainty considering that there has to my knowledge not been a large scale double blind RCT. But there are, once again, over 60 studies showing positive effect which, individually, are not absolute proof that the medicine works, but together clearly show promise. Your bias is rather extreme and frankly I don't appreciate your dishonest insinuation that I am somehow arguing in bad faith. Again, I linked a collection of more than 60 positive studies. It is unlikely that every one is poor quality and/or fraudulent.
Here is the link again[0], maybe you could actually click the link before responding, as you should have done previously. And yes, I've read a number of them. I can also provide the following [1] which suggests (in silico) the mechanism of action of ivermectin is inhibition of protease, which is the target enzyme of at least one other drug under development by pfizer for treatment of covid.
If you think "positive effect" is a weasel word then perhaps you do not understand the scientific process. I'm not claiming with certainty that ivermectin works, only that in light of, again, some 60 studies showing positive effect, inneffectiveness is unlikely. While you check these sources, please also check your rabid bias.
It might not be an alternative drug but it's certainly an alternative narrative. The momentum for the jab is all but unstoppable at this point. The continued talk of jab passports, and such. Once a narrative becomes normalized it's difficult to change.
Note: This isn't a political statement or criticism. It's Human Comms and Human Behaviour 101.
Then clearly you need to read more. I suggest starting with "Power for All." Words matter. They create worlds. Narratives matter. They enable myths to persist.
The reference to "horse dewormer" is the fact that a substantial volume of people started actually ingesting horse dewormer bought straight from farm supply stores because ivermectin was listed as a component.
Demand for horse dewormer intended for this ad-hoc use grew so much that its availability was jeopardized, and in some cases ceased to be available to farmers who needed it to treat their cattle.
CNN used the term to falsely describe what Joe Rogan took to treat COVID - he did not take horse dewormer but a normal human dosage prescribed by a doctor.
Sure, there were reports of people taking horse dewormer and nobody objects that reporting, just the usage of the term in relationship to JR.
I was reading the COVID-19 literature and this review was the best I found at elucidating the known pathophysiology so far. It indicated that part of the (very complex) syndrome was platelet release of 5-HT (serotonin). They speculated that SSRIs of some kind could help stem the dumping of 5-HT into the bloodstream.
The disease evolves to different stages using different mechanisms at each stage, which explains why certain medications only seem to work at really specific stages of the disease.
P. E. Marik, J. Iglesias, J. Varon, and P. Kory, “A scoping review of the pathophysiology of COVID-19,” Int J Immunopathol Pharmacol, vol. 35, p. 205873842110480, Jan. 2021, doi: 10.1177/20587384211048026.
Be aware that the said antidepressant is an SSRI, which has the potential to cause permanent sexual dysfunction (PSSD) [1]. It seems that we don’t quite understand how the drug works. Most doctors threw this condition out of the window by claiming SD is caused by depression. There have been some recent studies showing possible mechanisms behind it. Some manufacturers and healthcare organisations (NHS) are beginning to label this as a potential side effect. But in general it’s not well known.
I can tell you from personal use as someone with Bipolar Disorder, my ding-a-ling works fine before I start taking it and after the first week I have nothing but a wet noodle down there. So no, the SD is not caused by depression, it is caused by Prozac.
The mechanism of action how this helps is probably so simple that people who have over complicated thoughts cannot see the answer. Serotonin is made from tryptophan by the TPH enzyme. But Tryprtophan is also turned into kynurenine by an enzyme called IDO. This kynurenine pathway is crucial to resolving inflammation and the IDO enzyme is directly activated by inflammation.
When you take prozac so much serotonin builds up that it starts inhibiting the TPH enzyme and pushes more tryptophan down the kynurenine pathway and resolves inflammation.
Depression in probably most of the cases is an inflammatory disorder, which is why prozac helps some people with depression.
It has been shown that COVID-19 infection results in alterations of the kynurenine pathway. I will make a guess that prozac will end up helping some people but not everyone.
This thread has the strongest 'pseudoexpert-statistical-bro' vibe I ever experienced. It's amazing! You can have your own beliefs regarding COVID, but it surely revealed a lot about the social perception of statistics... #-/
I wish that people would stop disparaging attempts to contribute from people outside the specialized ingroup.
This stuff is hard, what counts as a hypothesis test for instance? Should datasets be locked and each view counted as a hypothesis? That's a very reasonable debate.
Contribute what? Mathematically incorrect statements don't seem very useful to me...
After cursory examination, I don't understand your point regarding the stackexchange link. As for hypothesis testing, I also fail to see how that is supposedly poorly defined.
Say you have a dataset with several variables and you’re looking for correlations between them. If 20 different groups separately download the dataset and test hypotheses, should their p-values be adjusted for multiple hypothesis testing?
Ok, now it's clear. So yes I agree that controlling false discovery rate is an unsolved problem that p-value doesn't address. Yes of course applied stats are a kind of 'soft science', at least regarding the interpretation of results. Statistical theory on the other hand, is very well defined.
So that doesn't justify considering assumptions made from erroneous conceptual understanding. This is where we disagree, I guess.
I see a lot of misconceptions every time statistics are discussed here actually. Like really basic stuff. To me it kind of signals the need for education reform, because in our increasingly sophisticated and data-driven world, everyone needs to know the basics of statistics.
16% > 11% represents a 31% decrease in the absolute number of hospitalizations. That's nearly a ONE THIRD improvement in the hospitalization rate. In places where hospitals are at or near capacity, that would make a huge difference.
Or were you trying to make a statement about the statistical validity of the result, because the outcomes differ by 5%? Because that's not how statistics work. A well constructed study of sufficient size can provide detect arbitrarily small differences in outcomes--you just need a bigger study size, the smaller the difference you want to detect. You would learn about this any 101-level statistics course, and a lot more useful information, too.
Intro to stats says that studies are very difficult and that bias is everywhere. Reinforces how stats can be whatever you want them to be.
Larger Number of people in the sample is a good start. However, bias is also a human element. Therefore you need that study reproduced independently, multiple times.
Researchers don't like this because studies are expensive and hard, and their boss is telling them to publish and get funding. The system is broken.
For starters, experimental bias isn't really an issue, here... This was an observational study, with crystal clear objective criteria for coding the dependent & independent variables.
A cheap, simple observational study like this is merely a first step. No reasonable expert is claiming that this study proves anything worth making medical policy changes over. This study's sole purpose is to establish whether it's worth investing in further studies, or if we can just shitcan the idea now. Subsequent studies will cost more money, and involve larger samples, better controls, and get a lot more scrutiny from peers.
Time and money are finite resources. You have to have some kind of system for deciding where to spend those resources.
This is how medical science works. It's got a ton of pitfalls, but we still do it this way because so far nobody has come up with a better alternative.
> experimental bias isn't really an issue, here... This was an observational study, with crystal clear objective criteria for coding the dependent & independent variables.
I have no position on this particular study, but in general you can make your coding as simple and objective as you like and it won't do much about experimental bias. Objective processing of bad data isn't better than subjective processing of bad data.
All studies have some level of risk for bias... But that doesn't mean all studies have the same level of risk.
The essay you linked is very good, but it's actually illustrating my point... The mouse study ran into bias problems because they had to go and directly measure something in nature, and then turn that into a number. That introduces several opportunities for error.
But this SSRI/COVID study isn't doing that. They're literally just looking at patient records, and counting hospitalization vs current SSRI usage. They're not picking up mice to count ticks... They're exporting records to a spreadsheet, and summing columns.
Now, these guys might have problems with the quality of the records they're relying on... Who knows whether the records are accurate or not. But that's a problem of data quality, not experimental bias.
You might say "Who cares? Either kind of error undermines the results, just the same!" But it definitely suggests that the other guy doesn't know what he's talking about... Because if he did understand stats, he would have used the right terminology.
> The essay you linked is very good, but it's actually illustrating my point... The mouse study ran into bias problems because they had to go and directly measure something in nature, and then turn that into a number. That introduces several opportunities for error.
> But this SSRI/COVID study isn't doing that. They're literally just looking at patient records, and counting hospitalization vs current SSRI usage. They're not picking up mice to count ticks... They're exporting records to a spreadsheet, and summing columns.
> Now, these guys might have problems with the quality of the records they're relying on... Who knows whether the records are accurate or not. But that's a problem of data quality, not experimental bias.
Well, no, I have to disagree with this analysis. The mouse study described in that essay didn't run into bias problems, and the reason it didn't is that it was counting the ticks itself. But other tick-counting studies did have bias problems (due to bad methodology), and the Lyme-disease studies based on the bad tick-counting studies had the same bias problems (because they were using the bad data). The bias doesn't go away when you wash it through two publications instead of one. It's not a different kind of problem -- or even a different instance of the same kind of problem! -- and there's no reason to give it a different name.
You sound like you just took a stats 101 class and now are bragging to a bunch of adults about how much you learned in stats 101. Sincerely, someone working in the field for last 7 years.
Sounds like I don't know nearly as as you... I minored in stats 20+ years ago, but since then I do a lot more arguing about stats than actually using them for work.
You're kinda right about one thing, though... I am definitely talking down to OP, and a couple of other folks.
I'm frustrated. There are real problems in how science uses statistics, and it sounds like OP & co have heard about those problems. But the way they talk about this study, they're just throwing crap against the wall to have something to say. They don't really seem to understand the problems they're talking about, or how those problems apply to the study we're currently talking about.
I should change my attitude, and stop taking out my frustrations on these folks. If they're wrong, I'm probably not going to change their minds by insulting them.
> For starters, experimental bias isn't really an issue, here... This was an observational study, with crystal clear objective criteria for coding the dependent & independent variables.
Just a nitpick: it was not an observational study, it was a true experiment, because they controlled the treatment: it was assigned by researchers at random. It is by definition not an observational study which have a distinctive feature that it doesn't control for a treatment.
I ran it through an AB test significance calculator using the upper bound for each.
p value was 0.9972 and the power was 92.40% it's a significant result.
"Variant B’s conversion rate (11.47%) was 30.08% lower than variant A’s conversion rate (16.40%). You can be 99% confident that variant B will perform worse than variant A."
> When the DSMC met on Aug 5, 2021, it recommended that the TOGETHER trial stop randomly assigning patients to the fluvoxamine group, as this comparison had met the prespecified superiority criterion for the primary endpoint (prespecified superiority threshold 97·6%).
That seems problematic. Did they stop the study because they had achieved statistical significance?
You'd be interested in learning about the origin and application of Chi-Squared tests (or Fisher's exact test). Detecting changes in population means, and making sure those changes aren't just random noise, is quite straightforward and can be done by hand.
It won't be possible for me to explain the answer to your satisfaction, if you lack at least a basic education in probability & statistics. Maybe Khan Academy has an intro level course, or a "Stats for Humanities" variant that can help you get started.
IMO, one of the largest hurdles that modern society is going to have to overcome is the average person's understanding of large (or small) numbers and basic statistics.
I think a large issue within that hurdle is that a lot of people simply won't want to learn, or apply the knowledge after learning.
And the funny thing is that the original commenter was looking at a trivial math problem. It wasn't even a question of statistical validity, it was just "What does it mean to compare percentages to each other?" That's grade-school mathematics.
I see this kind of error pretty frequently, and it's usually not a failure of mathematics... Most often, the person has some pre-existing negative emotional reaction to the stated conclusion, and their brain searches for something to criticize, in order to soothe those negative emotions.
I could only speculate as to why the original poster doesn't like hearing that an existing drug shows promise in treating COVID. Maybe they're a big Ivermectin booster, and they don't like the idea of another drug threatening their favorite?
I think you might want to reconsider your opinion of others. I believe the OP was referring to this result being on the edge of statistical significance given:
The effect size relative to the base population;
The fact that many similar trials are performed and discarded with similar drugs;
And as we see when looking deeper, there are other issues such as early stopping. It is not unreasonable to suspect the effect could disappear given more data.
YOU are raising some valid points... but based on the OP's other comments, they seem to have a very limited knowledge of statistics--and yet, they are pushing a very critical line on this topic.
OP is asking other posters to do quite a bit of homework for them... As in, "Is this study big enough?" <<YES>> "OK, but how big does it need to be to prove X?" ... At a certain point, it seems clear that OP is not arguing in good faith, because they feel compelled to make the critical statements, first, without understanding the topix.
I would caution you to not extend sympathy to OP's cause, simply because you happen to share a critical eye for this study. There is a HUGE difference between being right for the right reason, vs the wrong reason... and that's how we get crap like Ivermectin for COVID.
In a way it is though. There is a 84% chance you wouldn't go to the hospital either way, an 11% chance that you will go to the hospital either way, and a 5% chance that you will be saved from going to the hospital. So there is a 1 in 20 chance that this drug will save you from being hospitalized. It could also make your illness less severe in the other scenarios though.
Population and individual stats are different though. If someone is older and in a higher risk group, the drug could indeed reduce hospitalization risk for that individual much more than 5%, while for other low-risk groups it could do next to nothing.
Well thank you for stats 101 but what I was trying to ask was that if this level of confidence promising within medical/pharma field - i.e. do we have stats on studies that said something like out of the 767 or whatever studies that claimed a drug sounded promising because it was associated with 5% outcome improvement - 90% resulted in long term commercial success of the drug.
I mean take Remdesivir - https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa2007764 - statistically significant yet some other studies found it had no benefits. At least I don't think it was a slam dunk or promising in real life as day the vaccines.
It sounds like you're asking "What's the risk that this study will turn out to be wrong, in the long run?" That's a very interesting question, but sadly there's no way to answer it from the available data.
Different studies can show different results for a lot of reasons... Sometimes, it's just random chance. Other times, it's due to bad study design, or poor experimental controls, or deliberate P-hacking. There's no way to tell from the results of a single study.
But that's not what this study is for, anyway... This is a preliminary observational study to look for possible drug candidates that might impact COVID severity. It's only suggesting potential future directions of investigation, not advocating for immediately dosing everyone with SSRIs... Medical policy changes won't happen until a much larger body of evidence has been established.
It's the nature of science that not all experiments produce correct results. Sometimes, we get it wrong--but that's why we have to keep repeating experiments, and trying different variations, before we trust a conclusion.
In the meantime, though, medical decision makers will weigh the costs vs benefits of proceeding with an experimental treatment... If the risks are low, and the need is great, they'll probably let the door open to more experiments. Most people seem to think that's a pretty sensible way to do things.
Margin of error is not fixed. Depends on sample size. if you have a group of millions your error range will be in the hundredth of a percent. Here we are not talking about 20 people in each group. 1500. Thats very significant.
I recommend you take some stats courses if this does not make sense.
> The results, published Wednesday in the journal Lancet Global Health, were so strong that independent experts monitoring the study recommended stopping it early because the results were clear.
> When the DSMC met on Aug 5, 2021, it recommended that the TOGETHER trial stop randomly assigning patients to the fluvoxamine group, as this comparison had met the prespecified superiority criterion for the primary endpoint (prespecified superiority threshold 97·6%).
Actually, it is. This is an adaptive clinical trial, meaning its part of the protocol to change when pre-set criteria are met. This is stated in the paper. There's a whole body of work on the ethics and statistics of adaptive clinical trials and when to stop them early if promising results are found.
> He also cautioned against “play the winner” designs that increase the number of patients being randomized to arms that show the best results in an interim analysis. “That is most often used in early phase trials, like a Phase I or early Phase II trial where you’re really trying to identify the best dose level; such trials tolerate bias pretty well,” Sietsema said. “But you wouldn’t use a play- the-winner model in a Phase III trial because the potential for bias could lead to a wrong decision and the FDA would object.”
That sums up my concerns pretty well. This is being presented as a phase III clinical trial demonstrating safety and efficacy. For the level of effect they are testing for, I don't see how an adaptive trial is appropriate here.
Perhaps they were more interested in saving people's lives than waiting for the trial to conclude... I mean the downside is people are less depressed while on a ventilator.
> Perhaps they were more interested in saving people's lives than waiting for the trial to conclude...
The bit "waiting for the trial to conclude" actually means "determine if the drug actually has any effect or not".
No matter how much you are interested in saving people's lives, or any other moralistic fallacy that might pop up, you can only help them if you give them treatments that actually work. Cutting short a study is falling short of the most basic requirement to meet that goal.
The point is that math shows they determined that it has an effect before the trial ended.
So now you are faced with a conundrum. You made sure that it has an effect to the degree you wanted. Now the math says that you either might get even surer by continuing the trial, or save 30% people from hospitalisation.
Also in treatment group just one person died while in control it was 12.
So what's it going to be? Making little bit more sure or saving few lives?
> The point is that math shows they determined that it has an effect before the trial ended.
With a small enough sample, math can show that a coin flip gives tails 4 out of 5 times, specially if it's stopped too soon.
Don't you agree that stopping an experiment once we get the result we were hoping for and are looking for from the start does raise doubts regarding the conclusion?
With small enough sample math tells you exaclty how little confidence can you have in a given result.
And for a group of 1500 people it tells you how much confidence can you have. And it was more confidence than they demanded before starting the trial.
> Don't you agree that stopping an experiment once we get the result we were hoping for and are looking for from the start does raise doubts regarding the conclusion?
If you have a novel disease that's 99% fatal. And then you test a treatment that results in 30% people surviving 99% fatal disease. And you gathered enough data that that math tells you is enough to confidently claim that it isn't just a fluke.
Does stopping the trial and giving the medicine to the half of patients that you were keeping as a control group makes people raise doubts about efficacy of the drug or does that just make you not be called a second doctor Mengele?
Did they stop fluvoxamine trial? Or do they just mention that the effect was so strong that they could?
It was an adaptive clinical trial with multiple arms, so it wasn't a single hypothesis. Apparently this is considered legitimate in medical trials, but I have some reservations about the concept.
This sounds suspiciously vague. What experts? How did they become involved? Did they stop it because the study proved an effect, or because it was clearly not designed to be able to prove an effect?
How does your ad hominem questioning of their expertise / how they became involved invalidate the results?
The study reached its statistical significance goal, and thus the study was ended as it would be immoral beyond that point to continue to give people placebos when they knew the drug was working. I'd suggest reading up on the Tuskegee syphilis study for the ethics behind why studies are ended early once treatments have been statistically validated.
Dunno about the sample size, but sounds like "1/3rd of hospitalizations prevented" to me.
Though it's like... isn't the vaccine in the initial phases like "80+% of hospitalizations prevented"? I guess it's good to have all these options but would be nice to just get good vaccine coverage.
> A cheap antidepressant reduced the need for hospitalization among high-risk adults with COVID-19 in a study hunting for existing drugs that could be repurposed to treat coronavirus.
Astham went from being a risk factor to a risk reduction factor. Smoking likewise, we are even at the point where One study suggests this could be because nicotine interferes with ACE2 receptors, which may prevent the virus from entering cells.
Why isnt everyone having a cigarette each day to interfere with the ACE2 receptors?
Hah, backseat statistician are we? The next sentence of the article that said experts recommended to end the trials early should make it clear to you that to them that's really promising. Your last sentence basically says you're sure you know better than the panel of experts.
I don't know what the point of my reply is other than to recommend to you to have some humility that you might not know stuff...
You don't even have to stop taking it for that side effect to wear off. The amount of time it took for me to relieve sexual tension when I started on SSRIs was crazy. Many times I just gave up and tried again later. But it got better over the course of a few weeks and eventually got back to how I was before I started the SSRI.
This isn't a guarantee that they will affect everyone the same way, but you can't judge SSRIs by the period when you're starting them.
But few are pills. Most require daily injections for a week or more. That's a lot more inconvenient and (usually) more expensive, especially for folks who live far from a clinic.
Sarcasm and hyperbole incoming but… Surely there could be no side effects of putting even more people on SSRIs! well how many more people you thinking? Covid-many.
I wonder how objective/subjective were the criteria for going to the hospital. I don’t meant to make fun of it but is there a chance that fewer patients either didn’t panic or simply didn’t care enough?
Are psychiatric disorders risk factors for COVID-19 susceptibility and severity? a two-sample, bidirectional, univariable, and multivariable Mendelian Randomization study
Some studies found links, some didnt, all depends on how you slice the data. I would imagine quite difficult to get a sense when the major risk factors (age and weight) are so dominant.
I still would urge caution before taking any amount of SSRI[1]. They are very useful tools that work well for many people, but some people do get very serious side effects. They can also be difficult to stop, sometimes requiring very slow dose tapering over many months.
In my personal experience from both a multi-year experience with fluoxetine and (~5 years later) a short (~4-weeks-ish? I think?) experience with tramadol, there were serious side effects that lasted many months after I stopped taking the drug. I think I was still getting regular 'brain zaps' for almost a year.
Every medication requires weighing the expected benefits vs the adverser effects and risks. I'm not saying SSRIs/etc are bad. I just urge caution and respecting them like the powerful tools they are. Powerful tools - like SSRIs, opiates, or a table saw - are great if you need them, but you do need to understand them properly or you might loose a finger.
(that said, any SSRI side effects is almost certainly a better option than dying from covid, but... seriously... get vaccinated and do what you can (masks, limiting crowds, etc) so you - and the people you interact with - hopefully don't get covid at all)
[1] or anything that messes with serotonin like the SNRIs, SNDRIs, MDMA and related phenethylamines, or even stuff like the painkiller tramadol (it's also an SNRI)
I'm sorry to hear of those troubles. Yes, I'd have said some of the same things minus the direct experience if I were to give my opinions -- just wanted to counter where the GP comment seemed unreasonable.
Sarcasm and hyperbole incoming but… IF, big if, you are of the persuasion that the vaccine is a dna altering, 5g brain chip, population steralisation project; why would you want to see even more people being given SSRIs?
SSRIs are incredible, opiates are also incredible, both true wonders of modern medcine, especially for those that need them and truly wonderful tools for doing what they do. But they can also be terrible, really terrible, particularly when handed out in pez dispensers.
"Further studies are needed to establish whether the anti-inflammatory effects of fluvoxamine observed in nonclinical studies also occur in humans beings and are clinically relevant in the setting of COVID-19."
The mechanism of action how this helps is probably so simple that people who have over complicated thoughts cannot see the answer. Serotonin is made from tryptophan by the TPH enzyme. But Tryprtophan is also turned into kynurenine by an enzyme called IDO. This kynurenine pathway is crucial to resolving inflammation and the IDO enzyme is directly activated by inflammation.
When you take prozac so much serotonin builds up that it starts inhibiting the TPH enzyme and pushes more tryptophan down the kynurenine pathway and resolves inflammation.
Depression in probably most of the cases is an inflammatory disorder, which is why prozac helps some people with depression.
It has been shown that COVID-19 infection results in alterations of the kynurenine pathway. I will make a guess that prozac will end up helping some people but not everyone.
Dr. Farid Jalali has been talking about the Serotonin link to covid, and had been recommending antiserotonergic drug Cyproheptadine for its treatment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wetdq9vX__c
I wonder what rate of adverse effects will be considered acceptable for a drug administered to people known to have the virus? For vaccines, our tolerance seems very low. I suspect we don’t actually think prevention is better than a cure.
It would depend greatly on their age, I would posit for that those over 65, any drug that killed less than 10% of the people who took it would be acceptable.
Vaccines are part of a broader political debate, the problem in politics is people are picking sides. It's very rare to run into a person who doesn't support the vaccine mandates but did get vaccinated. People are generally either anti-vax & anti-mandate, or vaccinated and pro-mandates.
The antivax crowd uses the same persuasion techniques to discourage vaccination that media uses to convince young people that COVID poses any risk of mortality to those under 17. That is to say one or two extremely rare outcomes are trumpeted loudly in order to convince society at large of the danger that is virtually non-existent.
I’ve taken the vaccine and am vehemently anti-mandate. I know others in the same position. I haven’t admitted my anti-mandate views to anyone in person who I am not close to and trust. You’re right though, people definitely pick sides. I get the feeling people could hardly comprehend someone having a “mixed” view like mine, but from my vantage point it’s quite simple: I chose to get vaccinated; I recommend it for most above a certain age; I don’t think blanket coercion is justified.
This matches my experience. Ive recently been more open about science-based (to the extent i can as a layperson) perspectives that dont fit neatly into the binary news representation(s), and discovered many more nuanced perspectives than the internet would have you beleive.
I got the vaccine hoping it would make travelling easier and because I don't want to spend money on useless tests. Too bad I ended up having to get tested anyway.
I bet with crystal meth you won't even notice your COVID if you take enough of it. Not sure it's a worthwhile tradeoff though, though I'm sure "legalize everything" crowd would disagree. Taking SSRIs to very marginally reduce severity seems like an extremely dumb idea.
Cannabis was found to be "helpful" also. There are papers on that. I suppose the mechanism is the same - reduce cortisol caused by some underlying stress by turning off the brain from time to time, and get people to sleep more.
It's so strange how people are looking to truly foreign substances / drugs (from ivermectin to bleach to SSRIs now) compared to a vaccine, which is basically just a bunch of mRNA and a few preservatives.
That is, a bunch of stuff that is basically already floating around in our bodies / cells.
mRNA vaccines are not really new [0]. This article [1] specifically shows that we've used the mechanisms of mRNA vaccines since the 70s, and at least modern iterations of mRNA vaccines since ~10 years ago.
Even if they were new, they're just a bunch of the same sort of genetic material that is already floating around in our bodies, not some external foreign substance that interacts with our cells.
I posted this w/r/r SSRIs below, but it’s also true for Ivermectin: the development timeline aligns largely with that of mRNA vaccines.
Vaccinated diseases, more so than other medical ailments, are subject to existing technology being “good enough” until it suddenly isn’t anymore. But that doesn’t mean new entries are untested; it means the economic envelope in which it makes sense to test them is just a different shape.
i guess it's just natural distrust of anything that's new (mrna vaccines are most certainly a first time here). And tbh i find this suspicion quite reasonable.
As a bit of historical trivia: the historical development timeline for SSRIs runs roughly parallel with that with the development timeline for mRNA vaccines. They’re roughly the same age.
Are they really? As someone who takes SSRIs after trying out more 'serious' alternatives for ADHD-related depression (e.g. slow release stims which are bona-fide narcotics), SSRIs are treated like candy and the first treatment option it seems to me.
Stopping the use of SSRIs is definetly not a joke and that part unfortunately in my experience doesn't get explained or taught enough for patients in my opinion.
I've used them my whole life and try to talk about it as much as I can to parents of especially teens who take them.
FLCCC and doctors now labelled quacks have been pushing this for months.
Clinical successes of alternative, outpatient treatments have been directly disparaged by the FDA. I have zero trust in the institutions meant to protect us.
Dr. Pierre Kory has been using this for months to treat both long-covid patients as well as vaccine injured patients.
I hate to bring this stuff up on a technical forum like this, but some very disgusting incentives are at play with our healthcare system and the pharmaceutical industry, that need correction.
If you are suggesting that there is a conspiracy to keep inexpensive drugs from being used to treat covid, then I would like to point out that corticosteroids - an inexpensive and widely available generic medication - are an accepted part of treatment for people hospitalized with covid, and has been for some time now. There is no conspiracy.
Corticosteroids are not prophylactics. They also aren't something you take to prevent hospitalizations.
I'm specifically talking about treatments that, if taken on early onset of symptoms, help prevent hospitalizations in the first place. Such treatments would have rendered the Emergency Use Authorization for novel expensive treatments, null and void.
And I'm not alleging a conspiracy. I'm concerned that Trump's project warp speed created incentives to suppress cheap alternative treatments to expensive EAU treatments.
I generally don't believe large conspiracies are that common. I do believe that poorly implemented incentives create conspiratorial appearing behavior with negative externalities.
I personally know people that directly suffered from the costs of these poor incentives, one vaccine injured friend that doctors refused to acknowledge her injury was related to the vaccine, and thus forced to pay out of pocket for several cardiologist visits and depend on her own sleuthing to finally start recovering months later. She had sudden heart issues with POTs symptoms right after her second shot. Healthy late 20s.
Side note: it's amazing to me that we are all of a sudden trusting big pharma...when two years ago, everyone knew the incentives were broken, that these same companies regularly compromised the integrity of doctors, regulatory committees, and media, all while creating health crises in the name of profit.
Covid news is propaganda. I suggest you all pick up a book on empathy on how to talk to marginalized communities that have dealt with state backed violence for decades.
By participating in and distributing "covid news" you are perpetuating a harmful atmosphere to those attacked by the state.
Trigger words include "covid", "covid-19", "masking", "vaccine mandate", "vaccine", "mask mandate", "lockdown", "stay at home orders" and more.
Please exclude this harmful language from your vocabulary and please stop distributing "covid news" on hacker news.
I was a heavy cigarette smoker in my 20s, and over those years, I experienced worsening asthma and also worsening anxiety and depression.
Eventually I was prescribed an SSRI (Zoloft), and found that not only did my mood change, my asthma completely abated, even though I was still smoking just as much.
After a few months I decided I didn't like all that the SSRI was doing to my psyche, so when the prescription finished I tapered off it, and sure enough the asthma returned a few months later.
I've never enquired much as to what what was going on - I didn't speak to doctors or other people about it. But the correlation between SSRI intake and asthma abatement was very clear.
(And yes I know it was very stupid to be smoking as an asthmatic - I quit completely the following year and have stayed off them for coming-on 15 years. I've also been mostly asthma-free in that time, though it returned for a few months about 7 years ago, after a period of intense career-related stress, but then cleared up after I undertook some healing work that included both immune-system support and emotional healing.)