COVID-19 treatment: Clinical trials of arthritis drug Tocilizumab begin: Report

India has begun multi-centre clinical trials of Tocilizumab for treating COVID-19, says a report by The Economic Times.

Tocilizumab is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with moderate to severely active rheumatoid arthritis.

The drug blocks IL-6 receptors and has shown encouraging clinical results the report suggests, including temperature returning to normal quicker and improvement in respiratory function.

It is considered among the key repurposed drugs likely to help in the fight against COVID-19.

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The report quotes Dr AS Soin, a national lead investigator for the trial, as saying that the drug is already under trial in other countries, where it is being used on severely ill patients who may be in too advanced a stage to respond to treatment.

However, in India, majority of the patients will be with moderate illness and not in intensive care units (ICU) or on ventilators.

The trial will be carried out in various hospitals across 10 cities in the Delhi-National Capital Region, Maharashtra, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Tamil Nadu.

“The idea is to prevent them from progressing to the severe stage. This is of vital importance for India where lack of enough ICU beds and ventilators would be the bottleneck once the infection rates rise,” Soin was quoted by the newspaper as saying.