Does tocilizumab trigger an inflammatory storm?

Tocilizumab is a biological therapy that can be used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), or giant cell arteritis. If you have rheumatoid arthritis, other autoimmune diseases, or inflammation, you may have too much IL-6 protein in your body. This causes inflammation and damage, and in children, fever and rash. Tocilizumab works by blocking the effects of IL-6. The use of tocilizumab during the cytokine storm caused by the novel coronavirus improved oxygenation patterns in hospitalized patients with COVID-19, but the biologic drug did not appear to significantly affect mortality.