In a small uncontrolled study, severe COVID-19 patients improved after tocilizumab
In short: Researchers retrospectively analysed 20 patients with severe or critical COVID-19 who received the antibody drug tocilizumab alongside standard care at two Chinese hospitals in February 2020. Within days, fever resolved and oxygen needs dropped in most patients, lung lesions on CT scans improved in the large majority, and all patients were eventually discharged.
The researchers link the inflammatory storm seen in severe COVID-19 to interleukin-6 signalling, and gave an antibody that blocks this pathway alongside routine therapy. Because there was no comparison group of similar patients left untreated, and the analysis was retrospective in just 20 people, the improvements seen can't be firmly credited to the drug alone, a caveat the original paper's own claim of reduced mortality does not fully reflect.
Why it matters: Early, uncontrolled findings suggested tocilizumab might help calm the dangerous inflammation of severe COVID-19, but this study alone can't prove it works.
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Sources
- Source: Research: Xu et al. (2020). Effective treatment of severe COVID-19 patients with tocilizumab. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. · cc-by
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