Anti-IL-6 agents have been suggested to treat critically ill patients with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia, sparking the development of randomized clinical trials to quickly evaluate the safety and efficacy of these agents in treating the virus.
Jeffrey S. Weber, MD, PhD, deputy director at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center and co-director of the Melanoma Research Program, explained that these agents are being explored because a small portion of patients who are infected with COVID-19 have a cytokine storm syndrome.
“It’s just this violent release of substances that normally are utilized by the immune system for good purposes, and they are so vigorously secreted by immune cells that they cause detrimental consequences to the body. It’s kind of what happens when you have sepsis, meaning you have a blood infection and the bacteria, for example, start to…
