A rheumatoid arthritis drug previously found to save lives among intensive care patients with Covid could also help those receiving oxygen on general wards and reduce pressure on the NHS, researchers have found.
A trial called Remap-Cap revealed last week that the anti-inflammatory drug tocilizumab cut both the risk of death among Covid patients in intensive care and the length of time patients spent in such units.
Now the largest trial for Covid treatments in the world, Recovery, has not only supported those findings, but also revealed that tocilizumab could help a wider range of Covid patients.
“We think about half the patients admitted would benefit from this drug based on our calculations,” said Prof Peter Horby of the University of Oxford, who is also Recovery’s joint chief investigator. “We think that can be happening almost immediately.”
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The new trial found that tocilizumab reduced the risk of death by about 14% relative to the risk among those receiving standard care.
The majority of patients in the trial received the arthritis drug on top of the steroid dexamethasone, which has previously been found to save lives among the sickest patients. That, the team said, meant the benefits seen for tocilizumab came in addition to those from dexamethasone, and that the impact of the two drugs together was profound.
“Now we can reduce the risk of death by anything between about a third and up to half [compared with spring last year], depending on exactly which patients are treated ,” said Prof Martin Landray, also of the University of Oxford and a Recovery joint chief investigator.
“That’s actually beyond our wildest dreams in terms of what we thought we’d be able to achieve,” he said.
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