A high-cost drug used in the treatment of arthritis patients is being used domestically in Covid-19 positive patients who are in critical health conditions, with good results so far.
One of those patients is Dr. Félix Antonio Cruz Jiminián and the other is former Santiago Governor José Izquierdo, both with encouraging results, revealed the Minister of Public Health, Dr. Rafael Sánchez Cárdenas, who warned that it is not a free-sale medicine and that its application meets strict medical criteria.
It is tocilizumab, a biological medicine, which is supplied through the High Cost Medicines Program of the Ministry of Public Health.
He said that in critical patients that it has been applied, results are being seen and that it will be applied to everyone who needs it, but who meets the criteria for it.
He said that there will be no effort to apply it to save the lives of Dominicans. “This is tocilizumab, a high-cost medicine that other countries are also using with good results and that has also been used here in two patients, as is the case of the former governor of Santiago, José Izquierdo,” he said.
Tocilizumab (Actemra) is a biologic medication approved to treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in adults, polyarticular juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA), and the systemic form of juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) in children. They are used to suppress the immune system in autoimmune diseases.
Biological drugs are artificial and manufactured using genetic engineering techniques and are closely related to a protein that the body produces naturally.
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