Tocilizumab, used for rheumatoid arthritis because it suppresses part of the immune response, has now been widely used for Covid-19 patients, but new studies cast doubt on the drug and the “hypothesis underlying its use.” A New York Times and Washington Post article recognized two studies in JAMA Internal Medicine and one in The New England Journal of Medicine that found the drug tocilizumab did not reduce the death rates of Covid-19 patients.
Jonathan Parr, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases, wrote an editorial accompanying the studies in JAMA, and said “observational studies–which report outcomes in patients who have taken a drug but do not have a comparison group randomly assigned not to take it–are insufficient.” He also added that “doctors desperate to find treatments are struggling to keep with the torrent of COVID-19 studies.”
“We really need randomized trials to answer these hard questions,” he said in the New York Times article.
In the Washington Post, he acknowledged that he will wait until more compelling results are available before changing his practice.