CT findings in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia after treatment with tocilizumab: foreign literature review

Abstract

Purpose. Review and analysis of the available foreign literature about CT findings in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia after treatment with tocilizumab.Material and methods. 6 publications were analyzed that were available for the keywords “COVID-19”, “radiology”, “CT”, “tocilizumab”, “cytokine release syndrome”, “interleukin 6”, “IL-6”. Search was limited only to English language manuscripts with no time limit. The literature search was last done on 3rd June 2020.Results. There is a small number of studies on CT findings of COVID-19 pneumonia during the treatment of actemra (tocilizumab). At the request of “COVID-19”, “radiology”, “CT”, “tocilizumab”, “cytokine release syndrome”, “interleukin 6”, “IL-6” in the database of medical and biological publications “PubMed” on 03.06.2020 can be found only 8 publications that would satisfy the search query. At the time of writing this article we were able to locate only 1 full text articles in English which was the study of CT findings in patients with COVID-19 pneumonia after treatment with tocilizumab. It is important to note that new data is being shared regularly and so far, it consists mostly of pre-prints, case reports, small case series.Conclusion. After analyzing the available literature, it can be concluded that the majority of authors confirm the positive effect associated with taking tocilizumab, as evidenced by a very rapid improvement in the condition of patients, however, the CT-findings often does not correlate with the clinical course of the disease and does not always show improvement in lung tissue, which should not be regarded as negative dynamics, but as a natural regression of pathological changes in lung tissue.