ArticleThe Journal of antimicrobial chemotherapy2022
Outpatient purchasing patterns of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in the USA and Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic: an interrupted time series analysis from 2016 to 2021.
Article in The Journal of antimicrobial chemotherapy, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed, 5 citations in OpenAlex.
- Demographic Variation In US Outpatient Hydroxychloroquine And Ivermectin Use During The COVID-19 Pandemic.Health affairs (Project Hope) · 2025Article
- Inefficacious drugs against covid-19: analysis of sales, tweets, and search engines.Revista de saude publica · 2024Article
- Off-label drug use during the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa: topic modelling and sentiment analysis of ivermectin in South Africa and Nigeria as a case study.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundHydroxychloroquine and ivermectin received widespread attention after initial studies suggested that they were effective against COVID-19. However, several of these studies were later discredited.
objectivesWe explored the impact of scientific articles, public announcements and social media posts on hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin purchases in the USA and Canada during the COVID-19 pandemic.
methodsWe conducted a retrospective, population-based time series analysis of retail hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin purchases in the USA and Canada from February 2016 through to December 2021, using IQVIA's Multinational Integrated Data Analysis database. We fitted the purchasing rates with interventional autoregressive integrated moving average models. We used Google Trends to identify the most influential interventions to include in the models.
resultsThere were significant pulse increases in hydroxychloroquine purchases in March 2020 in both the USA (P < 0.0001) and Canada (P < 0.0001). For ivermectin, there were no significant changes in April 2020 in either the USA (P = 0.41) or Canada (P = 0.16); however, significant pulse increases occurred from December 2020 to January 2021 in both the USA (P = 0.0006) and Canada (P < 0.0001), as well as significant ramp increases from April to August 2021 in both the USA (P < 0.0001) and Canada (P = 0.02). The increases in ivermectin purchases were larger in the USA than in Canada.
conclusionsIncreases in hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin purchasing rates aligned with controversial scientific articles and social media posts. This highlights the importance of scientific integrity and disseminating accurate epidemiologic information during pandemics.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.