Search Tag: tocilizumab

2025 22 May

Both corticosteroids and interleukin-6 receptor antagonists (IL-6ra) -  tocilizumab and sarilumab - improve survival and reduce organ support needs in hospitalised COVID-19 patients, but their comparative effectiveness is unclear. Alternative treatments may be needed due to drug access issues.    Interleukin-1 (IL-1), involved in acute inflammation,...Read more

2021 16 Feb

A large majority of COVID-19 infections are mild or asymptomatic. However, there is a significant portion of individuals who develop severe respiratory illness that requires hospital care, and that could progress to critical illness with hypoxic respiratory failure requiring prolonged ventilatory support. This hypoxic respiratory failure is associated...Read more

2020 26 Oct

Tocilizumab is a humanised monoclonal antibody that binds human interleukin 6 (IL-6) receptors. It is generally used in inflammatory arthritis, giant cell arteritis and cytokine release syndrome after chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy.   Tocilizumab has come under close scrutiny during the COVID-19 pandemic. Early observations from China...Read more

2020 19 May

Clinicians are faced with a serious disease with no effective therapy. Several options are being considered to treat COVID-19, but how promising are these drugs? A  number of colleagues and friends from outside the hospital have asked me whether they should take hydroxychloroquine for their COVID-19. A friend asked me whether he should...Read more