In the introductory podcast for our series on repurposing rheumatology drugs for COVID-19, Jinoos Yazdany discusses the rationale behind investigating these agents and explores the role of rheumatologists in ensuring they are studied as safely and efficiently as possible (13:07).

In the introductory podcast for our series on repurposing rheumatology drugs for COVID-19, Jinoos Yazdany discusses the rationale behind investigating these agents and explores the role of rheumatologists in ensuring they are studied as safely and efficiently as possible (13:07).

As outlined by Jinoos Yazdany (University of California, San Francisco, USA) at the virtual 2020 ACR State-of-the-Art Clinical Symposium, the study included data from 600 patients submitted to the registry between 24 March and 20 April 2020, of whom 46% were admitted to hospital and 9% died.

In a second opinion article published in the same journal, Kim and co-author Jinoos Yazdany (University of California, San Francisco, USA) stress that “[d]ata to support the use of [hydroxychloroquine] and [chloroquine] for COVID-19 are limited and inconclusive,” whereas “evidence for the use of these drugs to treat immune-mediated diseases is not.”

As reported in a JAMA research letter , Jinoos Yazdany (University of California, San Francisco, USA) and team calculated that the use of infliximab-dyyb was associated with “modestly lower” total average annual cost than infliximab, at US$ 14,202 (€ 12,265) versus $ 17,335 (€ 14,970).