Critically ill COVID-19 patients who received a single dose of a drug that calms an overreacting immune system were 45% less likely to die overall, compared with those who didn't receive the drug, according to a new University of Michigan study.
And they were more likely to be out of the hospital or off a ventilator one month after treatment, the research shows.
The lower risk of death in patients who received intravenous tocilizumab happened despite the fact that they also had twice the risk of developing an additional infection, on top of the novel coronavirus.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Clinical Infectious Diseases after being available as a preprint last month, suggests a benefit from timely and targeted efforts to calm the "cytokine storm" caused by the immune system's overreaction to the coronavirus. Tocilizumab, originally designed for rheumatoid arthritis, has already been used to calm such storms in patients receiving advanced immunotherapy treatment for cancer.
