Abstract: PLOS ONE RESEARCH ARTICLE Role of ivermectin in the prevention of SARSCoV-2 infection among healthcare workers in India: A matched case-control study Priyamadhaba Behera1, Binod Kumar Patro1, Arvind Kumar Singh1, Pradnya Dilip Chandanshive1, Ravikumar S. R. ID1, Somen Kumar Pradhan1, Siva Santosh Kumar Pentapati1, Gitanjali Batmanabane ID2*, Prasanta Raghab Mohapatra3, Biswa Mohan Padhy4, Shakti Kumar Bal3, Sudipta Ranjan Singh5, Rashmi Ranjan Mohanty6 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 1 Department of Community Medicine and Family Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar, India, 2 All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar, India, 3 Department of Pulmonary Medicine and Critical Care, All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar, India, 4 Department of Pharmacology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar, India, 5 Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar, India, 6 Department of General Medicine, All India Institute of Medical Sciences Bhubaneswar, Bhubaneswar, India * director@aiimsbhubaneswar.edu.in OPEN ACCESS Citation: Behera P, Patro BK, Singh AK, Chandanshive PD, S. R. R, Pradhan SK, et al. (2021) Role of ivermectin in the prevention of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers in India: A matched case-control study. PLoS ONE 16(2): e0247163. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0247163 Editor: Muhammad Adrish, BronxCare Health System, UNITED STATES Abstract Background Ivermectin is one among several potential drugs explored for its therapeutic and preventive role in SARS-CoV-2 infection. The study was aimed to explore the association between ivermectin prophylaxis and the development of SARS-CoV-2 infection among healthcare workers. Received: December 14, 2020 Accepted: February 2, 2021 Published: February 16, 2021 Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; therefore, we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles. The editorial history of this article is available here: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0247163 Copyright: © 2021 Behera et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: The anonymized data set has been uploaded to the public repository (figshare). The dataset can be accessed at the Methods A hospital-based matched case-control study was conducted among healthcare workers of AIIMS Bhubaneswar, India, from September to October 2020. Profession, gender, age and date of diagnosis were matched for 186 case-control pairs. Cases and controls were healthcare workers who tested positive and negative, respectively, for COVID-19 by RT-PCR. Exposure was defined as the intake of ivermectin and/or hydroxychloroquine and/or vitamin-C and/or other prophylaxis for COVID-19. Data collection and entry was done in Epicollect5, and analysis was performed using STATA version 13. Conditional logistic regression models were used to describe the associated factors for SARS-CoV-2 infection. Results Ivermectin prophylaxis was taken by 76 controls and 41 cases. Two-dose ivermectin prophylaxis..