Thousands of Children Prescribed Ivermectin or Hydroxychloroquine for COVID: Study
Researchers examined health data to look for which medicine doctors prescribed children with COVID-19.
Doctors prescribed ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine more than 4,400 times to children with COVID-19 during periods of time when the drugs were not recommended against the illness by authorities, according to a new study.
Doctors issued 813 prescriptions of hydroxychloroquine to minors with COVID-19 after the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society on Sept. 12, 2020, advised against using hydroxychloroquine outside of a clinical trial, researchers found. The recommendation came after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) revoked emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19.
Dr. Julianne Burns, a clinical assistant professor of pediatric infectious diseases at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, and other researchers examined records from Komodo Healthcare Map, a health care claims database that Komodo Health says covers 330 million patients. They looked for children who had acute COVID-19 from March 7, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2022.
After excluding some children, including those who did not have continuous insurance coverage for at least one year prior to diagnosis, the researchers found approximately 4,480 prescriptions of “nonrecommended medications.”
All but a few dozen of the prescriptions were for ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine.
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Dr. Robert Apter, who was not involved in the study, highlighted how the study referred to potential issues but cited no evidence of actual issues from usage of the drugs against COVID-19.
“The fact that there was a report of increased calls to poison control centers about ivermectin doesn’t mean a thing. When something gets in the news and people are curious about it, they may call the poison control center,” Dr. Apter told The Epoch Times.
He said that the drugs “have a long history of safe use in children.”
Dr. Apter has prescribed treatments for thousands of COVID-19 patients and was one of the doctors who sued the FDA over its anti-ivermectin statements. He said he’s prescribed ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine for several teenagers who became so sick that their families became concerned. Those children improved quickly and there were no side effects, according to the doctor.
Dr. Burns did not respond to a request for comment.
The researchers said limitations to their study stemmed from their reliance on health care records, which can’t account for COVID-19 infections that were not reported to a health care provider and might contain mislabeled codes. Funding came from the Stanford Maternal and Child Health Research Institute. No conflicts of interest were listed.
