Ivermectin

[Bornagain514]

I was recently diagnosed with CLL after a year plus of repeating colds and respiratory infections. My whites were in the high 20's sometimes almost doubling in a couple of weeks time. Now they are in the low to mid teens and I feel good. So, my question is has anyone used Ivermectin with any success? I'm hearing it does help stabilize white blood counts. Thoughts? Thank you in advance!

[DriedSeaweed]

Hello. If you lock your post you may get more responses.

There is currently no evidence that Ivermectin has any meaningful activity on CLL. I couldn’t find any literature on it. Likely, no activity is noticed in the lab so no further study or resources have been devoted to the issue.

It is interesting since there have been some interest in anti-parasitic Pyrimethamine in CLL. Dr. Jennifer Brown did a study on it a few years back. Maybe one day there will be interest in using such drugs as complements to the more effective and expensive CLL therapies. Unfortunately, there is little interest or funding for drug repurposing.

There are lots of drugs that can cause lymphopenia (lower white cells) but this is not the same as treating a cancer. They are tough buggers.

I just finished up zanubrutinib and venetoclax a couple months ago. Few side effects and almost like I was not on any treatment. Most people do great with these drugs and you should consider it.

Ivermectin has a contentious place in the public discourse. It would be great if it did do something as unexpected as treat CLL. I would welcome it but in the meantime take advantage of the great molecules currently proven to make a difference.

[SofiaDeo]

May I ask, what is the source of your thinking ivermectin stabilizes blood counts? Is it from a medical journal? It's been studied extensively in animals, as well as humans, and I think if there was evidence for "stabilizing white cell counts" it would have been used in at least animal cancers/blood diseases.

amcny.org/blog/2022/03/30/i...

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator]

Welcome to our community!

You've received some excellent replies to your question about ivermectin here as well as the reply by Skyshark in response to your earlier reply healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

If you are interested in checking whether any interventions you try have any effect on your CLL progression, you need to track changes in your blood test counts, primarily your haemoglobin, platelets and absolute lymphocyte counts. There are five different white blood cell types as covered in this pinned post; healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

The CLL Society in your country provides a patient education toolkit cllsociety.org/cll-sll-pati... which includes a template for monitoring trends in your blood counts cllsociety.org/cll-sll-pati...

The challenge is that for many of us, our lymphocyte counts bounce around considerably, so it's very hard to determine whether there's any worthwhile effect. Even then, some supplements (including cannabinoids), can drive CLL cells out of the blood and into the nodes, spleen and bone marrow, their proliferation centres. That's why it's important to track changes in haemoglobin and platelet counts as they eventually trend down as bone marrow infiltration worsens.

You are welcome to share any references about how ivermectin helps stabilize white blood counts for our members to give you a much more knowledgeable assessment than you'll get from what you see in media reports. We regularly see mentions of promising cancer research in the media, but very few actually deliver to expectation healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo... Also, because CLL cells aren't immortal, but die at a slower rate than they proliferate, researchers nearly always use a cell line for different blood cancers than CLL, so media reports are usually about myeloid, not lymphoid blood cancers and rarely specifically about CLL.

CLL is such a heterogeneous illness, it's very challenging to determine whether steps we take have helped or it's a random effect. That's why randomised controlled trials are the gold standard.

healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

If there's any worthwhile effect, it should show up in the statistically determined differences between the progression rates in the control and intervention arm (or more commonly in CLL, the intervention arm and a comparison arm where patients are given a proven treatment).

The best evidence for an intervention to help you live longer and with a better quality of life with CLL, is to improve your fitness healthunlocked.com/cllsuppo...

Neil

[Bornagain514]

Thank you Neil for your time and insights. Blessings, Elizabeth

[LeoPa]

Where did you hear that? I heard it's very good for parasite infections.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ive...

[Blue-bird_]

This article suggests that ivermectin may have cancer treatment potential, but it was published in March 2024 and hasn't been peer reviewed :cureus.com/articles/223832-...

The benefits are only theoretical. However, inflammation is inflammation. If you have a virus, parasite, fungus or other infection, it will impact your immune system and cause it to work less effectively, for example you will be more prone to colds. It's possible that treatment with ivermectin just alleviates the burden the parasite places on your immune system, enabling it to tackle other infections more efficiently.

Ivermectin doesn't necessarily treat the cancer, it just cures the secondary condition, which in turn leads to improvement in your blood counts and prolonged remission. But the article does point out that science is always charging, so a different conclusion is possible. Doesn't sound like that has been researched yet, though.

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator in reply to Blue-bird_]

Thank you for finding that overview paper. Chasing through the refences, it's as I expected - the study results relate to myeloid stem cell line related leukemias, not lymphoid ones. The paper describing the leukemia research is from 24 years ago, from MYELOID NEOPLASIA| NOVEMBER 4, 2010

The antiparasitic agent ivermectin induces chloride-dependent membrane hyperpolarization and cell death in leukemia cells.

ashpublications.org/blood/a...

It notes, "It was also proven that IVM has a synergistic effect with cytarabine and daunorubicin on the treatment of leukemia." These are drugs used to treat acute myeloid leukemia and similar. Likewise the cell lines used to evaluate myeloid leukaemias are for myeloid blood cancers.

Neil