SynthesisScientific reports2021
Decreased mortality and increased side effects in COVID-19 patients treated with IL-6 receptor antagonists: systematic review and meta-analysis.
Synthesis in Scientific reports, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 14 citations in OpenAlex.
- Efficacy and safety of imatinib in patients with COVID-19: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Wiener klinische Wochenschrift · 2025Pooled it
- Post-COVID-19 Jaw Osteonecrosis: A Narrative Review.Medicina (Kaunas, Lithuania) · 2026Review
- Interleukin 6 Antagonists in Severe COVID-19 Disease: Cardiovascular and Respiratory Outcomes.Protein and peptide letters · 2024Review
- Neutrophils in COVID-19: recent insights and advances.Virology journal · 2023Review
- IL-6 and cfDNA monitoring throughout COVID-19 hospitalization are accurate markers of its outcomes.Respiratory research · 2023Article
- A Clinical Case of Nosocomial Pneumonia as a Complication of COVID-19: How to Balance Benefits and Risks of Immunosuppressive Therapy?Antibiotics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Neddylation tunes peripheral blood mononuclear cells immune response in COVID-19 patients.Cell death discovery · 2022Article
- Circulating miR-320b and miR-483-5p levels are associated with COVID-19 in-hospital mortality.Mechanisms of ageing and development · 2022Article
- Observational
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
There is controversy whether IL-6 (receptor) antagonists are beneficial in treating COVID-19 patients. We therefore update our systematic review to answer the following research questions: (1) Do patients hospitalized for COVID-19 treated with IL-6 (receptor) antagonists have lower mortality compared to standard of care? (2) Do patients hospitalized for COVID-19 treated with IL-6 (receptor) antagonists have more side effects compared to standard of care? The following databases were search up to December 1st 2020: PubMed, PMC PubMed Central, MEDLINE, WHO COVID-19 Database, Embase, Web-of-Science, COCHRANE LIBRARY, Emcare and Academic Search Premier. In order to pool the risk ratio (RR) and risk difference of individual studies we used random effects meta-analysis. The search strategy retrieved 2975 unique titles of which 71 studies (9 RCTs and 62 observational) studies comprising 29,495 patients were included. Mortality (RR 0.75) and mechanical ventilation (RR 0.78) were lower and the risk of neutropenia (RR 7.3), impaired liver function (RR 1.67) and secondary infections (RR 1.26) were higher for patients treated with IL-6 (receptor) antagonists compared to patients not treated with treated with IL-6 (receptor) antagonists. Our results showed that IL-6 (receptor) antagonists are effective in reducing mortality in COVID-19 patients, while the risk of side effects was higher. The baseline risk of mortality was an important effect modifier: IL-6 (receptor) antagonists were effective when the baseline mortality risk was high (e.g. ICU setting), while they could be harmful when the baseline mortality risk was low.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.