Background: Tocilizumab and baricitinib are immunomodulators that have been repurposed for the treatment of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Whether one medication should be preferred over the other has not been established.
Methods: This multicenter retrospective cohort study comprised hospitalized patients with COVID-19 who received either tocilizumab or baricitinib. The primary outcome was improvement in respiratory status (at least 1-point reduction on the respiratory ordinal scale) at day 7 and up to day 28. Secondary outcomes included mortality, disposition, deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolism, or positive blood culture. Outcomes were stratified by baseline respiratory status and variant-predominating periods. Results were reported for the overall and propensity-matched cohorts.
Results: A total of 921 patients received tocilizumab and 638 received baricitinib. The propensity-matched cohort included 597 patients in each group. At day 7 in the overall and propensity-matched cohorts, significantly more patients had improvement in respiratory status in the baricitinib group. These improvements were seen in patients requiring supplemental oxygen and noninvasive ventilation/high-flow oxygen but not in patients requiring mechanical ventilation. Favorable outcomes with baricitinib were observed during the Alpha and Omicron periods. By day 28, there were no differences in the changes of respiratory status for the treatment groups in either cohort. Also, no differences were seen in mortality, disposition, development of deep vein thrombosis/pulmonary embolism, or bloodstream infections.
Conclusions: Baricitinib treatment was associated with more favorable respiratory improvement at day 7 when compared with tocilizumab, but no differences were observed up to day 28.
Keywords: COVID-19; baricitinib; tocilizumab.
© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Infectious Diseases Society of America.