Two new studies have revealed that the rheumatoid arthritis drug tocilizumab is associated with lower death rates in COVID-19 patients receiving mechanical ventilation.
Tocilizumab blocks interleukin-6 (IL-6), an inflammatory protein involved in a potential "cytokine storm" that can lead to respiratory failure in coronavirus patients.In the first single-center observational study, published late last week in Clinical Infectious Diseases, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor researchers found that tocilizumab was linked to a 45% reduction in risk of death (hazard ratio [HR], 0.55 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.33 to 0.90) and improved status after adjusting for propensity score inverse probability weighting (IPTW).In the second study,