The Highwire with Del Bigtree - WHAT IS IVERMECTIN AND WHERE DOES IT COME FROM

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

President of Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care, Pierre Kory, MD, explains ivermectin’s origin, from a microorganism discovered on a golf course in Japan, to a powerful antiparasitic.#GetFactsinated #PierreKory #IvermectinBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

It was discovered by a Japanese researcher who basically they were looking for microorganisms that secrete substances that kill other organisms. Because they figured if they could isolate that substance, they could use it as medicines to try to kill infections. And it's such an interesting story because it's a professor named Satoshi Amor who was a microbiologist in Japan. And he was looking for taking soil samples on a golf course in Japan. And he found this organism. And then in the lab, they noticed that this substance that they secreted, it was a bacteria called Streptomyces, which is well known. What's interesting is the particular form that makes the Ivermectin family of compounds

has only ever been found in Japan. Really? Yeah, it hasn't been found anywhere else. What they found was that it was really toxic to nematodes or worms or parasites. Okay. And so it was very quickly discovered to be a highly effective parasitic agent with almost no toxicity. What year are we talking about? What is it happening? This is mid to late 70s, when it was discovered and we started to develop it.

They were as a partnership between the Institute of Professor Murr, there's a man named William Campbell, a chemist with Merck, who then purified it from its original compound, which was avermectin to Ivermectin. And they saw that it was a really powerful antiparcytic, and so they developed a medicine. Here's what we now know about Ivermectin. It's this incredible drug because it not only has antiparcytic properties, it has anti-parasitic properties, it has anti-parasitic properties. It has antibacterial properties. It has anti-inflammatory properties. It even has, get this, anti-tumor properties.

You know, one of the things I'm looking forward, if we ever get out of this little war that we're in, is the future of Ivermactin in other viral models. You know, what's it like in influenza? What's it like in herpes and all these other things? I think it has so much potential.