{"id":47299,"date":"2020-10-26T15:18:33","date_gmt":"2020-10-26T19:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/medicine\/?p=47299"},"modified":"2023-06-06T18:01:11","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T22:01:11","slug":"parr-recognizes-more-trials-are-needed-to-validated-tocilizumab-for-covid-19-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.med.unc.edu\/medicine\/news\/parr-recognizes-more-trials-are-needed-to-validated-tocilizumab-for-covid-19-treatment\/","title":{"rendered":"Parr Recognizes More Trials Are Needed to Validate Tocilizumab For COVID-19 Treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"dr-jonathan-parr\"
Jonathan Parr, MD<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.”\u00a0 A New York Times<\/a> <\/strong>and Washington Post<\/a><\/strong> article recognized two studies<\/a> in JAMA Internal Medicine<\/a> and one in The New England Journal of Medicine<\/a> that found the drug tocilizumab did not reduce the death rates of Covid-19 patients.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Parr<\/strong><\/a>, MD, MPH, assistant professor of medicine in the division of infectious diseases, wrote an editorial accompanying the studies in JAMA<\/a>, 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.”\u00a0 He also added that “doctors desperate to find treatments are struggling to keep with the torrent of COVID-19 studies.”<\/p>\n

“We really need randomized trials to answer these hard questions,” he said in\u00a0the New York Times article<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the Washington Post<\/a>, he acknowledged that he will wait until more compelling results are available before changing his practice.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.”\u00a0 A New York Times and Washington Post article recognized two studies in JAMA Internal Medicine and one in The New … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69419,"featured_media":3504,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"layout":"","cellInformation":"","apiCallInformation":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[100,2],"tags":[629],"class_list":["post-47299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-infectious-diseases","category-news","tag-629","odd"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nParr Recognizes More Trials Are Needed to Validate Tocilizumab For COVID-19 Treatment | Department of 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