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.

[Bornagain514 in reply to DriedSeaweed]

Thank you for your kind response. I saw this and wondered if it has any relevance with thinking ivermectin stabilizes CLL. I hear that ivermectin only affects tumor related cancers however, this article mentions leukemia specifically. I'd love your take on the findings. Blessings,

americanthinker.com/article...

[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...

[Bornagain514 in reply to SofiaDeo]

I just saw this and was hoping you could comment on the findings in this article. It mentions leukemia specifically and not just tumor related cancers. Always eager to learn more since I am new to the CLL diagnosis. Blessings!

americanthinker.com/article...

[SofiaDeo in reply to Bornagain514]

Please realize that there are a number of mechanisms involved in what makes all the cancers very different. Originally, everyone got surgery (for solid tumors) and them standard chemotherapy, which kills *everything* with the hope that only regular cells survive. With the era of targeted treatments, various cancers are attacked at specific sites more or less specific to that cancer. Or some aspect of that cancer that is radically different than regular cells, in an attempt to kill off the cancer cells that may have "more than usual" of something normally found. Example: CLL often over-expresses BCL2, so even though a number of "normal" cells have BCL2, the cancerous ones with many more than usual, will be more sensitive.

Note that this article says "may/potentially" because something worked in a mouse. Whether or not it would work in a human, in concentrations that don't cause overt toxicity to other parts of the body, remains to be seen.

I can eat a bunch of arsenic and it "may" kill CLL, but it would kill many more other things before the CLL was all gone. Even though it "has potential" in certain other cancers. This is the problem with these "potentially useful in cancer" compounds. They often work on specific pathways, not all which are applicable to CLL, even if a concentration needed to kill cancer wasn't toxic to other organs.

med.stanford.edu/news/all-n...

[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 in reply to AussieNeil]

Neil, again, thank you for your kind response. I am trying to monitor my levels as best I can. I saw this and would love your take on the findings. Blessings, Elizabeth

americanthinker.com/article...

[AussieNeil Partner Administrator in reply to Bornagain514]

The article you referenced simply states "2.4 Hematological [leukemia] cancer" with no references. There are around 200 different hematological (blood) cancers and despite CLL being the most commonly diagnosed adult blood cancer, research is more often done on other blood cancers, because immortal CLL cell lines have proven hard to establish.

Without any further information, I don't think DriedSeaweed or SofiaDeo will be able to improve on the answer you received from Blue-bird_ a month ago.

The Epoch Times is unfortunately not a reliable source of medical information, which makes sense given who owns that media outlet.

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