TY - JOUR T1 - Correspondence on: ‘Interleukin-6 blockade with sarilumab in severe COVID-19 pneumonia with systemic hyperinflammation—an open-label cohort study’ by Della-Torre <em>et al</em> JF - Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases JO - Ann Rheum Dis SP - e196 LP - e196 DO - 10.1136/annrheumdis-2020-218616 VL - 81 IS - 10 AU - Chao Cheng AU - Fangjie Zhang Y1 - 2022/10/01 UR - http://ard.bmj.com/content/81/10/e196.abstract N2 - 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 … ER -