The World Health Organization (WHO) today recommended treatment with interleukin-6 antagonists for the treatment of severe or critical cases of COVID-19, after publishing positive results from trials with 11,000 patients.
Until now, the WHO only recommended a treatment for seriously ill patients with dexamethasone, a corticosteroid, but the publication of the trials in the Journal of the American Medical Association has encouraged the WHO to include this new tool against the coronavirus.
Tests show that treatment with interleukin-6, a glycoprotein secreted by certain cells, reduces the risk of death by around 4% (17% in ventilated patients).
In addition, in patients who do not yet need ventilation, it reduces the risk of using it by 21%, compared to the usual use of corticosteroids.
"Clinical trials to analyze the efficacy of monoclonal antibodies that block interleukin-6 in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 have only reported benefits, no effects and harm," said the professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at the University of Bristol, Jonathan Sterne.
WHO coordinated this study of 27 randomized trials with nearly 11,000 patients in 28 countries around the world in conjunction with King's College London, the University of Bristol, University College London, and the Guy and St Thomas NHS Foundation.
The World Health Organization insisted that given the magnitude of global inequity in vaccines, the population of the lowest-income countries will be those most at risk of severe or critical COVID-19 and those are the people to which these drugs will have to reach.
"While science has worked, we must now focus our attention on access to it," concluded in a statement the lead doctor in clinical management of health emergencies at the WHO, Janet Diaz.
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