A peer-reviewed study in the June issue of the journal Anticancer Research reported that most cancer patients who took a compounded ivermectin-mebendazole capsule met its threshold for clinical benefit. The prospective observational cohort enrolled 197 patients who were prescribed the two repurposed antiparasitic drugs through The Wellness Company, a U.S. telemedicine platform. A follow-up survey followed about six months later. It drew responses from 122 of them. Among those respondents, the authors reported a Clinical Benefit Ratio of 84.4 percent. The researchers put the regimen’s cost at a few thousand dollars a year. They set that against an estimated $111,000 for a year of standard chemotherapy. The drug pair is one High Country Advocate examined in January.
The authors sorted patient-reported outcomes by disease status. 32.8 percent reported no current evidence of disease. Another 15.6 percent reported regression. Stable disease accounted for 36.1 percent.
The remaining 15.6 percent reported progression. The Clinical Benefit Ratio counted every patient whose disease did not advance — the first three groups combined. Patients with no disease or regression made up 48.4 percent of respondents.
Most of the follow-up group, 86.9 percent, finished the initial prescription. Side effects appeared in about a quarter of respondents, most of them mild and gastrointestinal. Of those who reported side effects, 93.6 percent stayed on the drugs after adjusting the dose.
The authors tied the results to the drugs’ biology. Ivermectin, they wrote, acts on several cancer pathways and targets the stem cells linked to recurrence. Mebendazole breaks down the microtubules that cancer cells need to divide. The authors offered the separate pathways as their rationale for combining the two.
The drug pair sits inside a trend High Country Advocate covered in January, reporting that cheap antiparasitic drugs were producing laboratory effects the approval system had not evaluated. That earlier coverage named ivermectin and mebendazole among compounds with documented mechanisms but, at the time, no real-world cohort behind them. It described a system in which “the evidence moves faster than the approval process.” This study is that cohort for the two-drug combination.
The authors were direct about what the study cannot show. Outcomes were self-reported, not confirmed by imaging or independent review. The cohort had no comparison group.
Many patients were also receiving conventional treatment. About 28 percent reported concurrent chemotherapy. Because of that overlap, the authors wrote, the drugs’ separate effect cannot be isolated. They called the results hypothesis-generating and said randomized trials are needed to test them.
Two features of the study bear on how its results are read. Every author is affiliated with or paid by The Wellness Company, which both prescribes the combination and sells the compounded capsules — a conflict the authors disclosed in the paper. The author list includes cardiologist Peter McCullough, Yale epidemiologist Harvey Risch, and television physician Drew Pinsky. One study the paper cites in support, a 2025 fenbendazole case series, carries a retraction notice in the paper’s own reference list.
The study puts real-world outcomes behind a drug pair that until now rested on laboratory work and one early trial. It does not show that the drugs caused those outcomes. Patients reported the results themselves, the study had no control group, and the company that prescribes and sells the capsules also ran the research. The authors themselves call for randomized trials to test whether the drugs are responsible.
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