Clinical characteristics and early outcomes in patients with COVID-19 treated with tocilizumab at a United States academic center

  1. Casey A. Rimland
  2. Camille E. Morgan
  3. Griffin J. Bell
  4. Min K. Kim
  5. Tanner Hedrick
  6. Ashley Marx
  7. Brian Bramson
  8. Heidi Swygard
  9. Sonia Napravnik
  10. John L. Schmitz
  11. Shannon S. Carson
  12. William A. Fischer
  13. Joseph J. Eron
  14. Cynthia L. Gay
  15. Jonathan B. Parr

Reviewed by

Read the full article

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

We describe early outcomes in 11 COVID-19 patients treated with the IL-6 receptor inhibitor tocilizumab. While C-reactive protein decreased, neither clinical improvement nor reduced temperature or oxygen requirements was observed in most patients. Our findings contrast with prior reports and raise questions about tocilizumab use in severe COVID-19.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.13.20100404v2 on medRxiv
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.13.20100404: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: The study was approved by the UNC Institutional Review Board.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Descriptive statistics were calculated using JMP 15 and Wilcoxon signed rank test performed in GraphPad Prism 8.
    GraphPad Prism
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.13.20100404v1 on medRxiv