These are promising first tests. According to a not yet published French study by the Assistance Publique-Hospitals de Paris (AP-HP), the first results of which were nonetheless released on Monday, tocilizumab, an immuno-modulator, has shown its effectiveness in preventing "l 'inflammatory storm' in Covid-19 patients in severe condition.
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A "significant" reduction in patients transferred to intensive care or deceased
Treatment with this drug has "significantly reduced the number of patients who go to intensive care", explains to the microphone of Europe 1 Professor Olivier Hermine, coordinator of this trial. "And when we don't go to resuscitation, we are much more likely to survive." These results have yet to be "consolidated" and will be published in a scientific journal in a few weeks.
But the AP-HP explains that it has decided to make them public now "for reasons of public health", due to the context of the pandemic crisis, and to have communicated them to the French health authorities and to the World Health Organization ( WHO). Tocilizumab (Actemra or RoActemra), from the Roche laboratory, belongs to the family of monoclonal antibodies - antibodies created in the laboratory, derived from a single strain of lymphocytes and designed to respond to a specific target.
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A commonly used treatment for rheumatoid arthritis
Usually used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, it works by blocking the receptor of a protein of the immune system which plays an important role in the inflammatory process. Some patients with the new coronavirus experience a sudden worsening of their condition after several days, causing acute respiratory distress. A phenomenon probably linked to an excessive immune reaction of the organism.
65 patients received one or two tocilizumab injections in addition to the standard treatment (oxygen, antibiotics and anticoagulants), while the other half (64) received only standard care. They were then followed for 14 days to obtain these intermediate results, a follow-up which will continue to confirm the conclusions. At this stage, the researchers did not observe more undesirable side effects in patients who received the immunomodulator than in those who received the standard treatment, underlined Prof. Mariette.
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Around 800 euros per injection
Other teams have already reported encouraging results concerning tocilizumab, at Foch hospital in particular, but these were "open" studies which do not "provide the same level of evidence" and "do not allow to define a standard of treatment ", underlined the researchers of the AP-HP. The current cost of tocilizumab is around 800 euros per injection, a high price but much lower than that of a day of hospitalization in an intensive care unit, they said.
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A comparable drug, sarilumab (Kevzara), developed by Sanofi and Regeneron is also being tested in the same clinical trial program, called CORIMMUNO, and the first results should be known "within the next few days", according to Pr Mariette.