A group of leading scientists at the UK’s prestigious Imperial College of London has dropped a bombshell study confirming that ivermectin has been proven to treat certain forms of epilepsy.
Existing retrospective cohort studies, measured in 1991–1993 in the western African nation of Cameroon, uncovered an association between Onchocerca volvulus microfilariae load in childhood.
A follow-up study in 2017 also uncovered a risk of developing epilepsy later in life.
The current study, published in the peer-reviewed Nature Journal, was led by Professors Jacob Stapley and Maria-Gloria Basáñez at the Imperial College of London.
The research team analyzed children aged 3–15 years for Simulium damnosum sensu lato-transmitted onchocerciasis.
They used high-tech EPIONCHO-IBM simulation models to simulate 19 years (1998–2017) of annual ivermectin mass drug administration (MDA) reflecting coverage in the study area, while also modeling epilepsy prevalence and incidence.
Scenario-based simulations of 25 years of (annual and biannual) MDA in hyper- and holoendemic settings, with 65% and 80% therapeutic coverage, were also conducted.
Using the stochastic transmission model, EPIONCHO-IBM, the scientists predicted 7.6% epilepsy prevalence (compared to 8.2% in the Cameroon study) and an incidence of 317 cases/100,000 person-years (compared to 350).
Onchocerciasis also known as river blindness, is a parasitic disease caused by