Ivermectin - breast cancer - from Jane’s newsletter
Some people are taking dangerously high doses of ivermectin based on social media claims about its anticancer potential. Some are using veterinary paste intended for horses. People have died. Research does not support high doses.
For women with oestrogen receptor-positive breast cancer who hear the words “your cancer is no longer treatable”, it marks a turning point that is frightening. The drugs that were working — tamoxifen, fulvestrant — have stopped working. The tumour has found a way around them. And the options that follow are typically more aggressive, more toxic, and less certain. What is quietly remarkable, then, is that a drug costing a few pounds, originally developed to treat river blindness and parasitic infections, is emerging as a serious candidate for disrupting the precise molecular escape route that makes this resistance possible. A study published on 30 April 2026 in PLoS ONE adds detailed evidence — and it points in a direction that the field has not, until now, been looking.