HAS THE COVID-19 PHILOSOPHER’S STONE BEEN FOUND

THE vaccines are out but the death toll is still high, Brazil has a new variant, the hospitals are full so are the cemeteries. When shall we have an end to this misery?

This is the question that should be on everyone’s mind or at least those who believe this pandemic to be real and not a hoax as others think.

But whichever side you choose to take, the effects will be felt one way or the other, because unfortunately we live in a global village whether we want it or not, one’s problem is everybody’s problem, an outbreak somewhere is an outbreak everywhere.

Like I alluded to in the introduction of these series, because of the desperate times we live in people are in desperate need for an urgent solution and are taking anything they hear can be of help.

I would not be surprised if some people even start blowing flames of fire in their nostrils in the hope of killing the virus or even swim with crocodiles if they are told that can cure Covid-19.

ZAMRA SPEAKS OUT

Yet again because Ivermectin has made so much news nowadays, I will give a bit of an update on it as is obtaining in Zambia.

It has been noted that a lot of people are taking Ivermectin as prophylaxis or as treatment for Covid-19, whether this works or not we are yet to see.

As said earlier though will touch more on this when I talk about Ivermectin itself, Ivermectin in itself is actually an anti-parasitic drug, that is used to kill parasites and has been around for decades even having won the founders a Nobel prize in 2015.

There is an animal (veterinary) and a human form of the medicine. However, some countries may have only approved the animal form as currently is the case with Zambia.

But because of the crisis and desperation, there are some people that take the animal form as an alternative to the human form in the hope of preventing or curing Covid-19.

This revelation has prompted Zambia Medical Regulatory Authority (ZAMRA) to speak out in an official statement warning the public to stop this trend.

THE STATEMENT FROM ZAMRA.

It’s all about trial and error. The story of Penicillin

To think a drug that has become synonymous to the fight against bacteria and now so abused to a point where people have developed resistance was discovered by accident sounds like a plot in some adventure movie.

“One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. When I woke up on September 28, 1928, I certainly didn’t plan to revolutionise all medicine by discovering the world’s first antibiotic, or bacteria killer. But I suppose that was exactly what I did,” said Alexander Fleming.

Somehow like me, Scottish Physician and Bacteriologist Sir Alexander Fleming would sometimes not have the chance to put things where they are supposed to be.

I can imagine him waking up in the morning not knowing where the other sock was - the guy was a bit messy.

It is also said that while he was doing some experiments on some bacteria in some petri dishes, he forgot to put one in the right place then left for vacation and when he came back, he found fungi had grown on the dish, and was upset his experiment had been spoiled.

As he was about to discard the content he noticed that bacteria around the fungi were dead.

He decided to grow that fungi, extract a fluid from it and pour that fluid on other dishes with the bacteria. All the bacteria died, then he did the experiment on rats which were infected with the said bacteria, staphylococcus.

Those he injected with the fluid lived, those he did not died. Then penicillin was born. He had to do a lot of research but all was just in the laboratory until the two British scientists Howard Florey and Ernest Boris Chain who were doing research unearthed his paper and decided to try and purify the substance so that it can be used in humans. In 1945 Fleming and the two scientists won the Nobel prize for the discovery of Penicillin.

CLINICAL TRIALS

We seem not to have all that time, other countries are already conducting trials while others are even using some of these drugs including Ivermectin.

Someone sent what is purported to be an official document from our neighbouring Country Zimbabwe showing that some hospitals have authorised the use of Ivermectin. However, I am yet to verify the authenticity of this letter.

The only way to have certainity is to conduct clinical trials especially Double Blinded Randomised Controlled Clinical Trials.

This simply means a group of people volunteer to take part in the study and from this group of willing participants who meet the criteria for the study that is in terms of age, medical condition among the characteristics etc are randomly selected into two groups.

One of the groups is given the usual “standard” treatment while the other is given the “new drug” to be tried, in this case Ivermectin.

The one that is getting the standardised treatment is called the “control” group and one getting the new drug is called the “treatment” group. Then to even be fair the clinicians and the participants need not know which group of participants belongs to which group, that is they are “blinded” to the study.

And there are “single blinded” studies where neither the clinicians nor the patients know which group is which and then there are “double blinded’ studies where “both” the clinicians and participants don’t know and hence the double blinded study is one that is considered to produce most unbiased results as there is a belief that neither clinicians nor participants influenced the outcome of the study.

After the results of the study are published then the experiment when repeated in a different place with different participants and clinicians should produce similar results and this should be the same no matter where.

Only after such will the new drug be considered as the new standard treatment for the particular disease.

Until then, I would like to appeal for caution in whatever you are taking, remember that a lot of studies are yet to be conducted.

In general, indeed, as a continent, Africa needs to invest a lot in research and carry out our own studies on our own populations. There is a lot of advantage for this as a lot of factors do affect the outcome of studies, things like genes, age, even culture and environment etc do play a huge role.

Who knows, maybe the cure for Covid-19 is in that plant, that mululwe tree, that root and that leaf behind grandma’s hut etc or maybe it could still be Ivermectin itself or any other of these claimed substances. How else shall we know?

What is a double blinded randomised controlled clinical trial or study?

Until then Aluta Continua, the struggle continues.

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