Arthritis drug reduced Covid deaths in study

Eli Lilly & Co. and Incyte Corp.’s rheumatoid arthritis drug baricitinib reduced the risk of death from COVID-19 in a large UK study, bolstering evidence that the class of drugs that fight inflammation can help infected patients.

Add baricitinib to standard treatments reduced the risk of death among hospitalized COVID patients by 13%, according to results from the UK trial, called Recoveryin 8,156 people with the disease.

Most of the patients also received steroids, and about a quarter also received a different type of arthritis drug, Roche Holding AG’s Actemra.

The findings strengthen the case for treating hospitalized patients with drugs such as baricitinib. known as inhibitors JACKtherapies reduce potentially lethal immune reactions by blocking a cellular message to produce infection-fighting factors.

When combined with those of other studies, the results indicate that such drugs probably reduce the risk of death in patients with covid by about a fifth, the researchers said.

“What we have now is, so to speak, a set of drugs that fight the immune system at different levels, in slightly different ways.“, said Martin Landraya professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Oxford who helped lead the study, in a briefing.

The World Health Organization strongly recommended baricitinib in January for patients with covid serious or critical The companies sell the drug for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis under the brand name Olumiant.