WHO signs off on IL-6 drugs to treat se­vere Covid-19 cas­es, reignit­ing pric­ing de­bate

The World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion has rec­om­mend­ed its first new class of drugs to treat Covid-19 since it OK’ed cor­ti­cos­teroids back in Sep­tem­ber 2020, and the news will like­ly prove a boon for two ma­jor Eu­ro­pean drug­mak­ers.

Re­searchers at the WHO en­dorsed the use of IL-6 re­cep­tor an­tag­o­nists in com­bi­na­tion with cor­ti­cos­teroids to treat se­vere Covid-19 cas­es, the or­ga­ni­za­tion an­nounced Tues­day, af­ter an analy­sis of al­most 11,000 pa­tients found the drugs are ef­fec­tive at re­duc­ing the risk of pro­gress­ing to ven­ti­la­tion and death. The drug class, typ­i­cal­ly used for arthri­tis treat­ments, in­cludes Roche’s Actem­ra and Sanofi’s Kevzara.

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