{"id":37880,"date":"2020-05-14T08:35:03","date_gmt":"2020-05-14T08:35:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/?p=37880"},"modified":"2020-05-15T16:16:11","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T16:16:11","slug":"detectable-viral-load-and-il-6-a-role-for-tocilizumab-or-anti-jak-inhibitor-baricitinib","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/37880","title":{"rendered":"Detectable viral load and IL-6: a role for tocilizumab or anti-JAK inhibitor baricitinib?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simon Collins, HIV i-Base<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

A study of 48 participants (31 men, 17 women) enrolled in a COVID-19 hospital in Wuhan City, China, reported a close correlation between disease severity and both RNA viral load in serum and elevated levels of IL-6.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

No cases were categorised as mild; 21 were moderate (43%), 10 severe cases (21%), and 17 critically ill cases (35%). Although viral load in throat samples was positive in all patients, serum PCR was only positive in five patients who were critically ill, two of whom died.<\/p>\n

Peripheral blood leukocytes inversely correlated with severity of COVID-19 and IL-6 was sharply increased in critical patients, 10-fold higher than that in severe patients, all exceeding 100 pg\/mL.<\/p>\n

RNA and IL-6 were both closely correlated with severe illness (r=0.902) and patients with higher levels had great risk of organ damage.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers concluded with a discussion on plausible benefit from using anti-inflammatory drugs such as tocilizumab or the anti-JAK inhibitor baricitinib, currently licensed and with safety data to treat rheumatoid arthritis, some of which have already reported encouraging results in open-label uncontrolled studies. [2, 3]<\/span><\/p>\n

References<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Chen X et al. Detectable serum SARS-CoV-2 viral load (RNAaemia) is closely correlated with drastically elevated interleukin 6 (IL-6) level in critically ill COVID-19 patients. Clin Infect Dis. 2020 Apr 17: ciaa449. DOI: doi:\u00a010.1093\/cid\/ciaa449. (17 April 2020).
    \n<\/span>https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC7184354<\/a><\/li>\n
  2. Xu X et al. Effective treatment of severe COVID-19 patients with tocilizumab. PNAS, DOI: 10.1073\/pnas.2005615117. (29 April 2020).
    \n<\/span>    https:\/\/www.pnas.org\/content\/early\/2020\/04\/27\/2005615117<\/span><\/a><\/li>\n
  3. Cantini F et al. Baricitinib therapy in COVID-19: A pilot study on safety and clinical impact. J Infect. doi: 10.1016\/j.jinf.2020.04.017. (23 April 2020).
    \n    https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC7177073<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Simon Collins, HIV i-Base A study of 48 participants (31 men, 17 women) enrolled in a COVID-19 hospital in Wuhan City, China, reported a close correlation between disease severity and both RNA viral load in serum and elevated levels of …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[283,278],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid-19-investigational-drugs","category-covid-19"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/i-base.info\/htb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}