Tocilizumab therapy for IL-6 increment in a patient with non-fatal severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome

We report the administration of an anti-interleukin (IL)-6 antibody in a case of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) with an increase in IL-6. On the day of admission, SFTS viral load and IL-6 concentration were 93 831 copies/ml and 5.4 pg/ml, respectively, and tocilizumab was administered. SFTS viral load decreased to 17 821.1 copies/ml on the 3rd day of admission, while IL-6 levels increased to 104.9 pg/ml; SFTS viral load and IL-6 levels had decreased to 2876.4 copies/ml and 48.2 pg/ml on 7th day of admission, respectively. The patient fully recovered no tocilizumab adverse events. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Infectious Diseases. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

Automated summary

This study reports the administration of an anti-interleukin (IL)-6 antibody in a case of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS) with an increase in IL-6. The results show that the SFTS viral load decreased while IL-6 levels increased after tocilizumab treatment, and the patient fully recovered without any adverse events.