Our Friend, Professor Borody, the Poo and Ulcer Doctor is at it Again

[bhobba]

Check this one out (precis mine):

'Nasal and throat swabs could be missing cases of COVID with new evidence some infections occur in the gut and poo testing may also be needed. Professor Borody has published a new study which shows some patients who tested negative for COVID on a nasal swab, tested positive for COVID via a poo test. It suggests that some infections may be transmitted via bodily waste when a person does not wash their hands properly after going to the toilet.

A number of recent studies have also found some patients who were declared recovered from COVID-19 after they tested negative on a nasal swab, were still testing positive in their faecal samples. Unlike the nasal swab which detects a fragment of the genetic code of the virus that causes COVID-19 poo testing extracts the entire code, Professor Borody said. “You get a much tighter diagnosis”. However, poo testing was much more expensive costing $US850 per test.

The virus that causes COVID-19 takes hold in the human body by latching on to ACE2 receptors which are found in the nasal passage but these receptors are also present in the human gut. “Stool testing suggests that since large numbers of COVID-19 reside on the numerous gut ACE2 receptors, the infection in the GI tract has a pivotal role in the disease progression along with the cytokine-driven symptoms,” The study also performed genetic testing on the COVID-19 samples and identified 33 genetic mutations. Professor Borody, who is also testing his proposed triple therapy based on Ivermectin, found patients tested negative in their stools within two days using his therapy.'

I know they have picked up some Covid hot spots where I live by testing effluent. Maybe that is the future. Although his treatment can be used now, and 100 doctors (and growing) are doing just that, he wants to subject it to proper testing to get it rolled out ASAP - he hopes by Christmas:



Thanks
Bill

 

[jim mcnamara]

@bhobba
Help please.

Is there a paper or something a bit more scientific other than an opinion piece by a TV anchor?
The guy mentions 'hydroxy-chloroquine was found to be effective in 5 studies released this week'

Hmm. Cannot find them. www.covid-trials.org shows both ivermectin studies and hydroxy-chloroquine.
No studies I can find match what Mr. Opinion said. If things stay like this: no supporting research, then the post is moving out of the science forums down to Discussion.

 

[bhobba]

I will move it over to general discussion now. The video was just an interview I added so people could hear and see the guy. But Jim is correct - the TV reporter/anchor/presenter was saying things not backed up by cited references that can be checked. My bad. Interestingly Professor Borody is not a big fan of HCQ which - in his exact words - it is a completely different beast to Ivermectin. He thinks Ivermectin is better and safer. And so do I - while generally considered safe HCQ does have issues - although the protocol for using it is only for 5-7 days at the usual dose recommended for the drug (200-400mg per day) so is unlikely to cause trouble. As Professor Borody mentioned the WHO even advocated widespread use of Ivermectin as a public heath measure:
https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/82/8/editorial30804html/en/

Also, interestingly, if you read the WHO article it can have side effects attributed to interactions with what it is treating.

I am not personally aware of new studies involving HCQ and Zinc. The stuff I read has moved on to Ivermectin. My past reading is the evidence is still somewhat mixed for HCQ with experts still arguing about it. I personally would look into Dr Zev Zelenko's protocol using Quercetin (500mg), Vitamin C (1000 mg) and Zinc (25mg) as a preventative:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1i7C_6H1Yq0u8lrzmnzt5N1JHg-b5Hb0E3nLixedgwpQ/edit

As an aside I think it is something everyone should consider, because with an ageing population, widespread diabeties/pre-diabeties (close to 40% have one or the other these days) and other comorbidities, just getting the young and fit immune by getting Covid may not be enough to create heard immunity. Plus we now know even in the young and fit it can leave them with life long health issues. This seems to be a really weird virus indeed - anything from asymptomatic, to lifelong health issues even in low risk groups.

The reason I like it, is it is basically stuff you can get OTC at the chemist or health food shop and considered quite safe - although I would still see my doctor before taking it. Next time I see my doctor I will sound him out on the preventative. If you do get it while on the preventative, of course see your doctor, and decide what to do in conjunction with them - you could just switch to the higher dose for treatment or move to HCQ or Ivermectin (or other courses of treatment as decided between you and your doctor):
And Dr Zelenco has published a free interesting book on the treatment:
https://files.internetprotocol.co/ebook-covid19.pdf

Thanks
Bill

 

[Ygggdrasil]

'Nasal and throat swabs could be missing cases of COVID with new evidence some infections occur in the gut and poo testing may also be needed. Professor Borody has published a new study which shows some patients who tested negative for COVID on a nasal swab, tested positive for COVID via a poo test. It suggests that some infections may be transmitted via bodily waste when a person does not wash their hands properly after going to the toilet.

A number of recent studies have also found some patients who were declared recovered from COVID-19 after they tested negative on a nasal swab, were still testing positive in their faecal samples. Unlike the nasal swab which detects a fragment of the genetic code of the virus that causes COVID-19 poo testing extracts the entire code, Professor Borody said. “You get a much tighter diagnosis”. However, poo testing was much more expensive costing $US850 per test.

It's important to note that the RT-qPCR tests used for detecting are very sensitive and can detect dead virus as well as live, infectious virus. This is why many people can still test positive for the virus months after recovery, when they are unlikely to be infectious.

Have the researchers been able to isolate infectious virus from stool samples? This is key information for determining whether fecal transmission is a concern.

 

[Ygggdrasil]

I will move it over to general discussion now. The video was just an interview I added so people could hear and see the guy. But Jim is correct - the TV reporter/anchor/presenter was saying things not backed up by cited references that can be checked. My bad. Interestingly Professor Borody is not a big fan of HCQ which - in his exact words - it is a completely different beast to Ivermectin. He thinks Ivermectin is better and safer. And so do I - while generally considered safe HCQ does have issues - although the protocol for using it is only for 5-7 days at the usual dose recommended for the drug (200-400mg per day) so is unlikely to cause trouble. As Professor Borody mentioned the WHO even advocated widespread use of Ivermectin as a public heath measure:
https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/82/8/editorial30804html/en/

The United States Food and Drug Administration does not recommend ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19, stating that additional work needs to be done to establish the safety and efficacy of the drug in humans:

Q: Should I take ivermectin to prevent or treat COVID-19?
A: No. While there are approved uses for ivermectin in people and animals, it is not approved for the prevention or treatment of COVID-19. You should not take any medicine to treat or prevent COVID-19 unless it has been prescribed to you by your health care provider and acquired from a legitimate source.

A recently released research article described the effect of ivermectin on SARS-CoV-2 in a laboratory setting. These types of laboratory studies are commonly used at an early stage of drug development. Additional testing is needed to determine whether ivermectin might be appropriate to prevent or treat Coronavirus or COVID-19.

https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterina.../faq-covid-19-and-ivermectin-intended-animals

Here's a good piece explaining problems with the study showing that ivermectin can prevent SARS-CoV-2 replication in cell culture:

A group at Monash Univ. showed a month ago that Ivermectin could inhibit the Coronavirus in vitro. That paper is also a good review of the attempts at repurposing the drug in the antiviral space. The thing is, if you crank up the concentration, probably a lot of stuff will inhibit any given virus in vitro (relevant XKCD). The IC50 in their assay was about 2µM, and that number is where many medicinal chemists started getting off this particular boat. Micromolar cell-assay activity can certainly be real, but you’d generally want more potency than that as you move in vivo. The thing about Ivermectin is that it is effective against things like the river blindless parasite at really low doses: one 12mg or 18mg dose every few months. That’s not because it hangs around in the blood in high concentrations for that long – the compound’s half-life is a few hours, and it’s extensively metabolized as it goes through the liver. It does distribute strongly out into tissue, though, and that combined with its intrinsically high activity against the roundworms does the job.

But let’s imagine that you want to hit that 2 micromolar IC50 concentration in the bloodstream: how much Ivermectin would you need to take? Well, this calculation will involve some hand-waving, because who knows what the pharmacokinetics do as you head upwards like that. Here’s why I don’t want to even guess: that last link will show you that an 18mg tablet gives a peak blood concentration of 31 nanograms/mL. Ivermectin has a molecular weight of 875 (rather a lot when you think about it, to quote an old Monty Python routine), so that Cmax of 31 ng/mL is about 35 picomolar in the blood. Told you it was potent! So we’re around five orders of magnitude off here, which just isn’t feasible. One would have to hope that the compound concentrates significantly in the site(s) of action – really, really significantly. And we have no evidence that that’s happening.

It doesn’t take much to do these calculations – people were throwing their hands up in the air as soon as the Monash paper came out. As those letters to Antiviral Research note, ivermectin will start to hit other targets as you jack up the doses. The reason it’s such a great antiparasitic drug is that you don’t have to dose up at all. It’s hard to imagine that it’s a safe compound if you really have to push the concentrations to even within binocular distance of those in vitro levels. For that reason, the FDA has been warning people not to take the drug for the coronavirus.

https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/05/11/whats-up-with-ivermectin

These concerns about the applicability of the high dose used in the in vitro study to clinical situations are echoed in letters to the editor published by the journal Antiviral Research in response to the original publication: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7172803/

 

[bhobba]

Excellent responce. A couple of points. Our government has stopped HCQ from being prescribed by GP's and can only be prescribed by specialists. They could before, but not now because they do not want prescribing it for Covid. According to my specialist, who has doubts about it, if you follow the normal contraindications with the drug, and do not exceed the recommended dose of 200-400 mg per day, it is generally safe, although he does regular blood tests while on it - but you only use it for a week in Covid, whereas for what he uses it for it often is for years. So IMHO it should be between you and your doctor. The same with Ivermectin, which from my reading the dose of 12 mg for a 60kg person is normal, and is only taken once for Covid.

At the moment one can classify it's off label use as trials. But since it is generally safe, and prescribed by a doctor, under the guidance of a specialist (Professor Borody), I think it is being viewed at the moment as a trial using drugs known to be safe. It is interesting that testing for the virus he is doing is being done from poo, and it is being found to be a more reliable test finding the entire virus, not just bits as the nasal swab does.

Thanks
Bill

 

[jim mcnamara]

The pathogenesis of Covid is proving to be challenge to understand fully. It manifests in unusual ways and, while this is not terribly unusual, the asymptomatic aspect and comorbidity issues are being exploited politically. Note excess deaths.

The attached post with the video shows that, IMO. Open up everything! The problem is solved. The results of that approach show up in recurring spikes of new cases.

This problem is becoming so bad that the medcram people felt they had to explain death certificates. It involved the '6% of deaths were really from Covid'. Sehuelt had to explain excess deaths and stated that the interpretation of an internet somebody who was confused (possible deliberately) would result in nobody dying from anything except cardiac arrest. So there are no other fatal diseases. Before you comment, please watch this 9 minute presentation from a few days back 04/09/2020:



We had a similar go around here with several intelligent members, who are not Biologists.