A drug commonly used to treat people with rheumatoid arthritis may be helpful in the fight to save the lives of the most severe coronavirus patients, medical experts say.
The New York Times first reported that the medication, called tocilizumab, has been used among people diagnosed with COVID-19 who were suffering potentially fatal illness.
Growing evidence suggests that coronavirus patients with severe symptoms may develop cytokine storm syndrome, according to The Lancet, an international medical journal.
The phenomenon, associated with a variety of viral and noninfectious diseases, arises when one’s immune system goes awry and issues an overreactive inflammatory response to an illness. The biologic response has been seen among patients with other well-known viruses, including SARS, MERS and the 1918 flu.
When one suffers from the syndrome, cytokines - the body’s first responders to a virus or bacterial illness - are released into the bloodstream too quickly, causing organ failure and potentially life-threatening sickness, the National Cancer Institute’s website says.
Cytokine storms are believed to have been responsible for a significant number of deaths resulting from the flu of 1918, which killed at least 50 million people worldwide - young and old alike. Instead of protecting infected patients from the virus, the immune response contributed to the disease’s lethality, according to a 2007 report from the University of Minnesota.
According to the Times, an upcoming paper in Annals of Oncology detailed the case of a 42-year-old man in Paris, France who was diagnosed with COVID-19, hospitalized due to respiratory failure and developed cytokine storm syndrome.
The patient was treated with two doses of tocilizumab spaced eight hours apart, and he began to recover. His fever dissipated, and his lungs cleared, according to the Times’s article.
The newspaper reported that the man’s case follows similar recoveries in China and Italy, showing that the medication may be an effective treatment for those who develop potentially fatal symptoms from the viral respiratory infection.
The virus, which has proven most deadly for elderly individuals and patients with pre-existing medical conditions, has led to 48,583 deaths worldwide. More than 950,000 cases have been confirmed, and roughly 202,000 people have recovered from the illness, according to Johns Hopkins University.
China, in early March, authorized clinical trials and the use of tocilizumab among patients with serious disease, the Times reported.
The pharmaceutical company, Roche, was also approved by the U.S. Food and Drug administration in March to test the effectiveness of the drug, whose in-store name is Actemra/RoActemra, on individuals diagnosed with coronavirus who are suffering from severe illness
“This new trial is vital because there are no well-controlled studies and limited published evidence on the safety or efficacy of Actemra/RoActemra in the treatment of patients suffering from COVID-19,” the company said in a statement on March 19.
The news comes as the FDA has also given the green light on the use of two anti-malaria drugs, hydroxychloroquine sulfate and chloroquine phosphate, on coronavirus patients. Chloroquine has shown encouraging signs in the treatment of those with the disease during testing.
However, a COVID-19 vaccine or recommended medical treatment do not currently exist right now. Hospitals warned against ingesting unauthorized substances in efforts to protect against the virus following the case of a man in Arizona who died after consuming the additive form of chloroquine used to clean fish tanks.
Health officials have said a coronavirus vaccine could take as long as a year to get to the public.
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