So, I'm using Ivermectin to fight face bugs

Here's a story of a personal nature.

Since about my early 40's I've had mild rosacea on my face from time to time.   For those who don't know, it presents as red spots or rashes, and it's sometimes described as an adult form of acne, but it doesn't look like your typical adolescent acne with pimples that have a definite life cycle.   Rosacea type acne is more like annoying red spots or small lumps that never fully come to a head, but just linger for a long time.   I should hasten to add, my case has always been pretty mild, never covering any substantial area, and I'm not sure whether anyone would really identify me as having a problem with it, as it has been well controlled by low dose antibiotics which I might take for a month or two, then wait to see how it goes, as well as a topical prescription cream called Rosex. 

I saw a doctor for a renewed script for the antibiotic (doxycycline) this week, and I explained that I recently had to keep taking it because it was only taking a week or so after finishing a 30 day course to find I was getting rosacea type red spots/lumps on my nose - one of the worst places to get them, as it can give a real WC Fields look.   Going back onto the antibiotic would clear it up again within a week or so, but I wasn't sure if it really was a good idea to be almost continually on any antibiotic.   (Doctors and pharmacists had told me before it is very well tolerated - and in fact it's recently been in the news as a potential wonder drug for helping stop the spread of STI's!)  

Anyhow, the GP said, after checking on line, that while it is thought to be very safe to be on long term, some think it is best to have breaks of a month or two to let your gut microbiome re-establish.  (It seems to have no effect on my digestion at all, but yes, given all the interest in recent years as to the effect of gut microbiome on our general health, this is the issue that I had been wondering about.)

I then went to another doctor at a skin clinic to have something else looked at, and we talked about the antibiotic issue too, but he suggested I could try another topical cream other than Rosex, which I had never found as good as being on a course of antibiotics.

He didn't tell me what the alternative cream was, so I was somewhat surprised to find at the chemist that it's the MAGA crowd's wonder drug - Ivermectin!

I had never heard of it as a treatment for rosacea - but it definitely is.  It's also been used, in lotion form, for head lice.

I had no idea it was used externally for parasites, as well as for internal ones, at least in animals.

So, why does it work for rosacea?   

The thing is, it seems the cause of rosacea is not well understood, but yes, I had read before that there was a suspected role, at least in some people, of that the ugly, ugly demodex mite that a lot of us have on our faces, especially as we age:

Newborns don’t have Demodex mites. In a study looking for them on adult humans, researchers could detect them visually in only 14% of people.

However, once they used DNA analysis, they found signs of Demodex on 100% of the adult humans they tested, a finding supported by previous cadaver examinations.

By the way, I also had never read up on the origins of Ivermectin before, either, but it is recent, and derives from a microorganism found in Japanese soil, or all places: 

Discovered in the late-1970s, the pioneering drug ivermectin, a dihydro derivative of avermectin—originating solely from a single microorganism isolated at the Kitasato Intitute, Tokyo, Japan from Japanese soil—has had an immeasurably beneficial impact in improving the lives and welfare of billions of people throughout the world. Originally introduced as a veterinary drug, it kills a wide range of internal and external parasites in commercial livestock and companion animals. It was quickly discovered to be ideal in combating two of the world’s most devastating and disfiguring diseases which have plagued the world’s poor throughout the tropics for centuries. It is now being used free-of-charge as the sole tool in campaigns to eliminate both diseases globally. It has also been used to successfully overcome several other human diseases and new uses for it are continually being found. This paper looks in depth at the events surrounding ivermectin’s passage from being a huge success in Animal Health into its widespread use in humans, a development which has led many to describe it as a “wonder” drug.

So yeah, I'm fairly surprised to find that I'm now using a small amount of the Right wing ratbags' favourite drug, in cream form, on my nose every morning.   It seems to be helping (in that I am not taking doxycycline at the moment, and am pretty much keeping red spots off my nose) so far, but it's a bit too early to tell.