I had a quick look and essentially it seems the latter found fewer studies (10 vs 19) and therefore fewer patients (1173 vs 2768)*
They have similar central estimates for RR of all cause mortality (0.37 vs 0.31) but due to having more patients the former has tighter CI (0.15 to 0.62) and concludes that there is an effect but the latter has wider CI (0.12 to 1.13) and concludes that there isn't an effect.
The latter could claim that there is as yet insufficient evidence of an effect based on the studies in their analysis but not that these isn't an effect. I especially take issue with the claim that "IVM is not a viable option for treating COVID-19 patients" when they themselves take such pains to talk about how low quality much of the evidence is!
The two meta-analyses also differ on their ratings of different papers - for instance the largest study (n=400, Lopez-Medina et al.) is rated as High quality (7 out of 7) in the former but at high risk of bias in the latter (due to deviations from intended interventions).
Scanning the paper there are a few issues. For the most part the problems are mitigated but there could still be issues:
- There was a period of 17 days where the placebo group were receiving ivermectin(!)
- The people from these 17 days were excluded from the primary analysis and additional subjects were enrolled
- The primary outcome was changed during the study
- This occurred ~30% through the study.
- The reasoning for changing from the old outcome seems reasonable
- It's hard to comment on whether the selection of the new outcome could have seen bias
- Placebo was changed during the study from dextrose water to something tasting more like ivermectin
- This was ~25% through the study
- Results did not differ much between the 2 placebo groups
- I don't feel like this would make a massive difference but I'm not sure
This paper is fairly typical of the quality of the studies (according to meta-analysis 2) or on the top end of study quality (according to meta-analysis 1) which causes me some concern.
In conclusion, if I was offered Ivermectin I would take it at this point (side effects seem to be small) and might even look to sign up to a trial if I had COVID - in the UK some people would be eligible for this one.
* 6 studies were common to both analyses.
Because it's political. Some people are invested in Ivermectin being effective, other people are invested in it not being effective. The extant studies are all inconclusive due to a small N, and mostly have problems with their methodology; if you pick and choose your studies in the right way you can get whatever result you want.
And the individual studies are often extremely bad. I note Cadegiani et al, who claim that Ivermectin (and also Hydroxychloroquine, and also Nitazoxanide) are each so effective, either individually or combined (they didn't bother to track which patients got which drugs) that it is unethical to use a placebo group in studying those drugs. I'm not sure how Elsevier can be affiliated with a journal that publishes material like that and retain any credibility.
My longer-form thoughts are at Substack.