Professor Dmitry Chudakov has co-authored a paper “Tocilizumab, netakimab, and baricitinib in patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19: An observational study” that has been recently published in PLoS One journal. The aim of the study was to assess inflammatory markers and clinical outcomes in adult patients admitted to hospital with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 and treated with a combination of standard-of-care (SOC) and targeted immunosuppressive therapy including anti-IL-17A (netakimab), anti-IL-6R (tocilizumab), or JAK1/JAK2 inhibitor (baricitinib) or with a SOC therapy alone. The researchers have found that in hospitalized patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19, the combination of SOC with anti-IL-17A or anti-IL-6R therapy were superior or comparable to the combination with JAK1/JAK2 inhibitor, and all three were superior to SOC alone. Whereas previous studies did not demonstrate significant benefit of anti-IL-17A therapy for severe COVID-19, new data suggest that such therapy could be a rational choice for mild-to-moderate disease, considering the generally high safety profile of IL-17A blockers. Full text of the paper is available here.