Arthritis drug cuts deaths in hospitalized Covid-19 patients, major study shows

Tocilizumab, a drug usually used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, reduced the rate for death in Covid-19 patients, according to a major clinical trial.

The result, from a U.K.-based study called RECOVERY, upends the thinking about the drug, which is made by Roche and which had produced inconclusive results in earlier studies. The RECOVERY trial has yielded many of the most important clinical results of the pandemic, including the earlier result that the steroid dexamethasone also reduces the death rate in hospitalized patients, and that several other drugs researchers thought might help patients, including the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, were not beneficial.