Just another cheap, safe and long-used-drug for our Health Ministers to ignore
A new study looked at 944,000 US Veterans who had a Covid test sometime. Of those, 2,200 were alcoholics who were also prescribed disulfiram. We might expect alcoholics to crash and burn against Covid, but amongst them, strangely, infections were lower than in the non-alcoholics — 34% lower. And there were no deaths from Covid in the 188 either. Sadly the death rate in infected vets who caught Covid, but weren’t using disulfiram, was 3%.
It’s only a very odd observational study, not a randomized one. The mechanism isn’t known for sure, but there are suggestions the drug interferes with an enzyme the virus needs and may reduce hyperinflammation. Haven’t we heard that before?
Ivermectin appears to be better, but for people without access to it, at least there is the option to become an alcoholic. Thinking about the corruption at the FDA or the TGA will help. And if you are already an alcoholic, best get treatment now before they ban it.
It obviously needs a proper study. Bear in mind there were only 188 alcoholic veterans who caught Covid. But still, none of them died, and we’d expect 5 or 6 deaths in a group of 188 non-alcoholic vets.
Wonder what the drug might achieve in a non-alcoholic test group?
The message here is that we are living in a sea of antivirals, but our funding system, the bureaucracy, and our deep medical swamp are getting in the way.
Study: Drug used for alcoholism treatment may fight severe COVID-19
By HealthDay News
The investigators found that people taking disulfiram, known as Antabuse, for alcoholism had a lower risk of infection with COVID-19 and were less likely to die from the coronavirus…
Listen to the sweet naivete of a Professor:
“This is a great candidate for a repurposed drug. It could easily be made available worldwide if we can prove it has a positive effect on patients with COVID-19,” said Chris Sander, a professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School.
They noted that disulfiram has been prescribed for more than 60 years as a treatment for alcoholism, and that it’s safe, inexpensive, familiar to physicians, and widely used in many countries.
And he thinks those are good selling points. If only this drug were $3,000 a dose, barely useful and fully patented.
REFERENCE
Fillmore N, Bell S, Shen C, Nguyen V, La J, Dubreuil M, et al. (2021) Disulfiram use is associated with lower risk of COVID-19: A retrospective cohort study. PLoS ONE 16(10): e0259061. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259061