Role of ivermectin in the prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers in India: A matched case-control study
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Abstract
Ivermectin is one among several potential drugs explored for its therapeutic and preventive role in SARS-CoV-2 infection. The study was aimed to explore the association between ivermectin prophylaxis and the development of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers.
Methods
A hospital-based matched case-control study was conducted among healthcare workers of AIIMS Bhubaneswar, India, from September to October 2020. Profession, gender, age and date of diagnosis were matched for 186 case-control pairs. Cases and controls were healthcare workers who tested positive and negative, respectively, for COVID-19 by RT-PCR. Exposure was defined as the intake of ivermectin and/or hydroxychloroquine and/or vitamin-C and/or other prophylaxis for COVID-19. Data collection and entry was done in Epicollect5, and analysis was performed using STATA version 13. Conditional logistic regression models were used to describe the associated factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Results
Ivermectin prophylaxis was taken by 76 controls and 41 cases. Two-dose ivermectin prophylaxis (AOR 0.27, 95% CI, 0.15–0.51) was associated with a 73% reduction of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers for the following month. Those involved in physical activity (AOR 3.06 95% CI, 1.18–7.93) for more than an hour/day were more likely to contract SARS-CoV-2 infection. Type of household, COVID duty, single-dose ivermectin prophylaxis, vitamin-C prophylaxis and hydroxychloroquine prophylaxis were not associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Conclusion
Two-dose ivermectin prophylaxis at a dose of 300 μg/kg with a gap of 72 hours was associated with a 73% reduction of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers for the following month. Chemoprophylaxis has relevance in the containment of pandemic.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.29.20222661: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IACUC: The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee of AIIMS, Bhubaneswar via ref number: T/IM-NF/CM&FM/20/125.
Consent: Verbal informed consent was obtained telephonically before participation in the study.
IRB: This consent procedure was approved by the ethics committee.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis Considering, 80% power, 5% alpha, 1:1 matching of cases to controls, minimum discordant pairs to be detected was set to 68, with an expected odds ratio of 0.5, the sample size was estimated to be 183 pairs, i.e. 366 individuals.15 Cases and controls were identified from the existing line list, which was … SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.29.20222661: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IACUC: The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committee of AIIMS, Bhubaneswar via ref number: T/IM-NF/CM&FM/20/125.
Consent: Verbal informed consent was obtained telephonically before participation in the study.
IRB: This consent procedure was approved by the ethics committee.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis Considering, 80% power, 5% alpha, 1:1 matching of cases to controls, minimum discordant pairs to be detected was set to 68, with an expected odds ratio of 0.5, the sample size was estimated to be 183 pairs, i.e. 366 individuals.15 Cases and controls were identified from the existing line list, which was prepared by the contact tracing team at AIIMS Bhubaneswar. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Data cleaning and analysis was done using STATA version 13. STATAsuggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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