Do you avoid tocilizumab in patients with prior bariatric surgery given the risk of GI perforation?

This is an interesting question with no current data to answer it with certainty. However, I personally would feel comfortable prescribing tocilizumab in a patient with an uncomplicated bariatric surgery history for the following reasons.

• The vast majority of GI perforations in the setting of TCZ oc...

IL-6 has a variety of important physiologic functions, including the promotion of tissue remodeling responses to exercise and reparative responses to injury (Kuhn et al., PMID 25478789). We still have much to learn about the respective roles of classical IL-6 signaling through mIL-6R and IL-6:sIL-6R...