The Role for Tocilizumab in COVID-19 Patients: Reflections on Monza Cohort Data.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemic has dominated the global health scenario from the beginning of 2020 and still represents a major health emergency. Cytokine inhibitors as tocilizumab have been used to treat COVID-19 severe pneumonia with conflicting results. We performed a retrospective study whose results can contribute to the general overview regarding the role of these agents in severe COVID-19 pneumonia, suggesting an interesting, even not statistically significant evidence of the effectiveness of tocilizumab treatment in this disease and sow a seed of reflection about their use in future waves of pandemic. We compared two cohorts of patients treated with local standard of care and with tocilizumab in the experimental one. With a median follow-up of 92 days, deaths were 6 and 16 in the tocilizumab and the standard of care group, respectively. With a longer follow-up than previous studies, a trend in difference with regards to mortality of the groups was observed.

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© 2021 Capici et al.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

Serena Capici and Luca Sala are co-first authors for this study. Dr Nicola Squillace reports personal fees from ViiV Healthcare, travel grants from Gilead science, outside the submitted work. Professor Paolo Bonfanti reports personal fees from Viiv, Gilead, Merck, Jannsen, and Pfizer, outside the submitted work. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work.