According to British media reports, COVID-19 patients in the United Kingdom are now able to be treated with tocilizumab and sarilumab — drugs used to treat rheumatoid arthritis that recent studies showed can significantly reduce mortality risk and length of hospital stay up to 10 days.
[A] Government-funded REMAP-CAP clinical trial showed that both drugs reduced the risk of mortality by 8.5% when administered to patients within a day of entering intensive care alongside a corticosteroid, such as dexamethasone.
Hospital mortality was 27.3% among patients receiving tocilizumab or sarilumab, compared with 35.8% of patients in the control group who did not receive the drugs, the researchers said.
Treatment with tocilizumab or sarilumab is thought to cost somewhere between £750 and £1,000 ($1017.59 to $1356.78) and is administered intravenously either as a one or two dose regime.
