Costly Tocilizumab jab helps to cure 40 corona patients

JAIPUR: Though the state government is taking measures to boost plasma therapy in Covid-19 patients, it is also trying other medicines as investigational treatment. Apart from drugs, it is also using tocilizumab injections to treat patients. So far, 40 such patients have been cured in the state after taking the jab.
Just like Hydroxychloroquine, Tocilizumab, is originally approved for rheumatoid arthritis patients, but both the drugs have been used by the doctors to treat Covid-19 patients.
“We have given Tocilizumab to 40 patients and all of them recovered. The cost of one injection is Rs 40,000, but price is not important for us. What is vital is saving life of a patient,” says health minister Raghu Sharma.
Tocilizumab has been given to Covid-19 patients with severe pneumonia. In some of the Covid-19 patients, increased concentration of cytokine inflammatory markers such as interleukin-6 (IL-6) and IL-10 has been found which cause acute respiratory distress syndrome in which the level of oxygen in tissues and cells goes down dangerously and causes hypoxia.
SMS Hospital doctors pointed out that there is a need to block the cytokine storm in such Covid-19 patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome. For the purpose, the doctors have used Tocilizumab which is proving an effective drug for such a condition. The hospital, which has provided treatment to over 1,000 Covid patients, has already taken initiative to use drugs such as Hydroxychloroquine, Lopinavir-ritonavir, a combination useful for HIV treatment and plasma therapy. In the series, the doctors have decided to use Tocilizumab for treating Covid patients.
The doctors had discovered cytokine storm, a condition in which the immune system attacks the body in critical patients. The doctors treating Covid-19 patients at the SMS Hospital, who were first to use Tocilizumab in state, looked for a medicine to block the cytokine storm, which could cause multiple organ and cardiovascular failures. For preventing cytokine storm, the doctors started using Tocilizumab.