Convalescent Plasma Therapy In Blood Cancer Patients With COVID-19

A new data showed that treatment with convalescent plasma improved the survival rate of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 who also had hematologic malignances that compromise the immune system. Patients who received convalescent plasma from donors who had recovered from COVID-19 had a death rate of 13.3 percent when compared to 24.8 percent in patients who did not receive it.

The data is released by the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19). The difference was more pronounced in patients admitted to intensive care units where patients treated with convalescent plasma had a death rate of 15.8 percent as compared to 46.9 percent for those who weren’t.

Corresponding author Jeremy Warner, MD, MS, FASCO, associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) said, “Despite the inevitable limitations of retrospective data, gathering enough case reports was really only possible through a large and comprehensive registry such as ours. We find these results compelling and certainly hope that they will be quickly investigated in a prospective clinical trial.”

COVID-19 patients having hematologic malignancy were enrolled in the study and the 30-day mortality of hospitalized adults from 71 medical centers that participated in the international CCC19 consortium was assessed. The analysis was conducted on 823 patients that did not receive convalescent plasma and 143 patients who received it.

Hematologic malignancies include chronic lymphocytic leukemia and multiple myeloma and they are associated with defects in immunity that can be exacerbated with treatments for the cancers. These put the patients with blood cancer at higher risk for infections and infectious disease severity. This is the first retrospective cohort study to indicate a benefit when compared to non-recipients.

The lead author of the study Michael Thompson, MD, PhD, an oncologist and hematologist with Advocate Aurora Health and Advocate Aurora Research Institute said, “Given that patients with hematologic malignancies have consistently higher mortality rates from COVID-19, we suspect our findings, along with other similar cases, support the biological plausibility of using convalescent plasma to improve survival in patients with hematologic cancers. Further research will study this hypothesis generating data and will likely change treatment practice.”

Advertisement

To understand the unique effects that coronavirus has on cancer patients, the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19) was formed in early 2020 to rapidly collect data.

Advertisement

The researchers said that the results from the CCC19 study on patients with hematologic malignancies are really interesting and open the possibility that benefit from convalescent plasma may vary depending on underlying medical conditions.

Co-author of the study said, “It is scientifically very satisfying to demonstrate that the idea of using sera from the convalescent patients that was probably first used during the 1916 New York outbreak of poliomyelitis, and then also during the 1918 Spanish influenza, is so useful in saving lives during COVID-19, the first great pandemic of this century.”

Source-Medindia