Tocilizumab or glucocorticoids treatment for patients with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia: An observational study

OBJECTIVE: To estimate the effect of tocilizumab or glucocorticoids in preventing death and intubation in patients hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia. METHODS: This was a retrospective cohort study enrolling all consecutive patients hospitalized at Reggio Emilia AUSL between February the 11(th) and April 14(th) 2020 for severe COVID-19 and treated with tocilizumab or glucocorticoids (at least 80 mg/day of methylprednisolone or equivalent for at least 3 days). The primary outcome was death within 30 days from the start of the considered therapies. The secondary outcome was a composite outcome of death and/or intubation. All patients have been followed-up until May 19(th) 2020, with a follow-up of at least 30 days for every patient. To reduce confounding due to potential non-comparability of the two groups, those receiving tocilizumab and those receiving glucocorticoids, a propensity score was calculated as the inverse probability weighting of receiving treatment conditional on the baseline covariates. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Therapy with tocilizumab alone was associated with a reduction of deaths (OR 0.49, 95% CI 0.21-1.17) and of the composite outcome death/intubation (OR 0.35, 95% CI 0.13-0.90) compared to glucocorticoids alone. Nevertheless, this result should be cautiously interpreted due to a potential prescription bias.