IL6R and COVID-19: Although a few studies have indicated that increases in IL-6 levels are potentially associated with an increased likelihood of mortality, they lacked statistical power as residual confounders were not considered or only indirectly validated through lower mortality after using an interleukin-6 receptor antagonist for blockading cytokine release in severe COVID-19 patients (Alattar et al., 2020; Aziz et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2020).