Tocilizumab and COVID‐19 (search up to 23 July 2020)
Citation: Aziz, M, Haghbin, H, Abu Sitta, E, et al. Efficacy of tocilizumab in COVID‐19: A systematic review and meta‐analysis. Journal of Medical Virology. 2020 Sep 12.
What is this? Tocilizumab has been suggested as a possible treatment for COVID-19.
In this rapid review, the authors searched for studies that assessed the efficacy of adding tocilizumab to standard care for COVID-19 patients. They did not restrict their searches by language of publication and searched for articles published from 1 January to 23 July 2020. They included 23 observational studies (6279 patients), from North America (8 studies) and Europe (15).
What was found: At the time of the review, the included studies suggest that tocilizumab has the potential to reduce mortality rates and the need for mechanical ventilation in COVID-19 patients with severe disease.