Pfizer’s arthritis drug Xeljanz shows lifesaving benefits in hospitalized COVID-19 patients

Pfizer’s BioNTech-partnered COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty may be getting all the attention these days, but the pharma giant’s anti-inflammatory drug Xeljanz just chalked up a win in treating patients hospitalized with the disease. Xeljanz reduced the risk of death or respiratory failure among hospitalized patients with COVID-19 pneumonia who didn’t require ventilation, according to data published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The company is now analyzing the full dataset and will assess the next steps, Tamas Koncz, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer of Pfizer Inflammation & Immunology, said in a statement Wednesday. The data come from the STOP-COVID study, which enrolled 289 hospitalized patients across 15 sites in Brazil. After 28 days of treatment, death or respiratory failure had occurred in 18.1% of patients on Xeljanz, compared with 29% for those who received placebo. All patients also received other standard-of-care treatments, including corticosteroids, which were given to nearly 90% of patients in both trial arms.