ArticleRevista de saude publica2024
Inefficacious drugs against covid-19: analysis of sales, tweets, and search engines.
Article in Revista de saude publica, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Use of chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin for Covid-19 prevention in vulnerable Brazilian populations.Revista de saude publica · 2026Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveAssess the correlation between the sales of two drugs with no proven efficacy against covid-19, ivermectin and chloroquine, and other relevant variables, such as Google® searches, number of tweets related to these drugs, number of cases and deaths resulting from covid-19.
methodsThe methodology adopted in this study has four stages: data collection, data processing, exploratory data analysis, and correlation analysis. Spearman's method was used to obtain cross-correlations between each pair of variables.
resultsThe results show similar behaviors between variables. Peaks occurred in the same or near periods. The exploratory data analysis showed shortage of chloroquine in the period corresponding to the beginning of advertising for the application of these drugs against covid-19. Both drugs showed a high and statistically significant correlation with the other variables. Also, some of them showed a higher correlation with drug sales when we employed a one-month lag. In the case of chloroquine, this was observed for the number of deaths. In the case of ivermectin, this was observed for the number of tweets, cases, and deaths.
conclusionsThe results contribute to decision making in crisis management by governments, industries, and stores. In times of crisis, as observed during the covid-19 pandemic, some variables can help sales forecasting, especially Google® and tweets, which provide a real-time analysis of the situation. Monitoring social media platforms and search engines would allow the determination of drug use by the population and better prediction of potential peaks in the demand for these drugs.
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Registered trials
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