Yale doctors think it can after giving the medication, known as tocilizumab, to severely ill patients back in March.
In addition, among those seriously ill patients who ultimately survived COVID-19, tocilizumab appears to have significantly shortened overall ventilation time. While hospitals around the country were having to keep patients hooked up for between 12 to 14 days, ventilations at Yale typically lasted only about five days.
Fortunately, Price said,"Yale has been a pioneer in immunotherapy in cancer. So most of us have a lot of expertise in clinical immunology. And we knew tocilizumab," a biologic therapy approved for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, a number of autoimmune diseases and CRS itself."So, we know it can be a targeted immune system suppressant with surgical precision," she explained.
After seeing significant success among very sick COVID-19 patients, Price and her team decided to expand their tocilizumab protocol, offering the drug to less ill patients, to tamp down or prevent CRS altogether. Still, Price acknowledged that it is premature to draw definitive conclusions about tocilizumab's promise."We clearly have to wait for the rigorous randomized double-blind studies, which are being done now. They're ongoing," she added."There's always a risk-benefit calculation that the frontline staff has to make in this kind of situation," he noted.
It’s primarily a treatment for Rheumatoid arthritis. Also used to treat cytokine storm after certain cancers
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