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We read with deep interest the article by Della-Torre et al,1 which was aimed at assessing the safety and efficacy of interleukin (IL)-6 blockade with sarilumab in patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia and systemic hyperinflammation. The results indicated that at day 28, overall clinical improvement and mortality were not significantly different between sarilumab and standard of care. Sarilumab was associated with faster recovery in a subset of patients who showed minor lung consolidation at baseline. This conclusion might be of great significance for alleviating the current COVID-19 pandemic.
However, we noticed that most of the patients in this study met the diagnostic criteria for acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS,2 according to the baseline demographic and clinical characteristics of the patients’ cohort, there were 22 patients with a PaO2/FiO2 ratio of 100–200 and 30 patients with a PaO2/FiO …
Footnotes
Contributors CC helped in the study concept and writing. FZ helped in study concept and revising.
Funding This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 81501923), and the Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (grant no. 2019JJ40289),and the Applied Basic Research and Soft Science Research Program of Yiyang City (grant no. 2018YR03).
Competing interests None declared.
Patient and public involvement Patients and/or the public were not involved in the design, or conduct, or reporting or dissemination plans of this research.
Provenance and peer review Commissioned; internally peer reviewed.