Doctors and scientists are now looking at convalescent plasma transfusions as a way to help patients recover from the coronavirus disease COVID-19.
Plasma transfusions were given to five critically ill patients in Shenzhen, China who had been infected with COVID-19. The patients ranged in age from 36 to 73 and within three days of receiving the transfusion, 4 out of the 5 patients saw improvements in their body temperature. Acute respiratory distress from the critical patients was resolved within 12 days in those same 4 patients, with three being released from the hospital.
Dr. Mike Ryan, Head of The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Health Emergencies Program said, convalescent plasma has proven “effective and life-saving” in the past, and:
It is a very important area to pursue because what hyper-immune globulin does is it concentrates the antibodies in a recovered patient. You are essentially giving the new victim’s immune system a boost of antibodies to hopefully get them through the very difficult phase.
The video below talks about the early success shown in Chinese studies.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the state will start to try this therapy on critically ill patients to make sure it’s safe. If and when the treatments are successful they can begin giving it to patients less severely infected. This treatment was first used in the U.S. back in 1918 during the Spanish flu epidemic.
Dr. Arturo Casadevall is an infectious disease expert from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who has been recommending convalescent plasma trials. He recently spoke to NBC News and said it can also be a useful line of defense for healthcare workers.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) told NBC News they are working “expeditiously to facilitate the development and availability” of convalescent plasma treatments. Once approved, New York will begin by focusing on the New Rochelle area, which has a high concentration of recovered patients.
Doctors in the UK are also planning on using convalescent plasma to patients admitted with pneumonia caused by the virus. Healthcare workers and their families will also be in line for plasma treatments for protection against the disease.
Professor David Tappin, a senior research fellow from the University of Glasgow, applied to the National Institute for Health Research for permission to run two convalescent plasma trials. He said: “Start-up will need to be faster than is normal, with most other trials usually taking months or years to get approvals and to begin.”
An NHS Blood and Transplant spokesperson explained the procedure:
Plasma from patients who have recovered from Covid-19 will contain antibodies that their immune systems have produced in fighting the virus. That plasma can be transfused to very poorly patients whose own immune systems are struggling to develop their own antibodies. The plasma transfusion is therefore intended to provide the poorly patient with antibodies from a recovered patient to help their body fight the Covid-19 virus.
Dr. Ryan points out that convalescent plasma treatments need to be administered at the right time: “It must be given at the right time because it mops up the virus in the system, and it just gives the new patient’s immune system a vital push at the time it needs it. But it has to be carefully timed and it’s not always successful.”
With the approvals expected very shortly, we will have a much better idea of how the plasma treatments work once the U.S. and UK trials get underway.
