Convalescent Plasma to Treat Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients

Decline in convalescent plasma use at US hospitals linked to higher COVID-19 mortality rate gives new hope about deciding the use of plasma therapy in COVID-19.

Plasma Therapy involves transfusion of antibodies from recovered COVID-19 (convalescent coronavirus patient) to a critical patient based on the principle that the blood of a recovered patient is rich in antibodies needed to combat COVID-19 in the absence of drugs to cure Coronavirus infection or vaccines to prevent COVID-19.

The use of convalescent plasma started declining late in 2020 after several large clinical trials showed no apparent benefit but a new study in the journal eLife by researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and colleagues suggests decline in the use of convalescent plasma to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients might have led to higher COVID-19 mortality from November 2020 to February 2021.

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‘Convalescent plasma use might lower COVID-19 mortality rate.’

They compared the number of units of plasma distributed to U.S. hospitals from blood banks on a per patient basis to the number of reported COVID-19 deaths per hospital admission across the country.

After analysing two datasets the researchers generated a model that suggests the COVID-19 case fatality rate decreased by 1.8 percentage points for every 10-percentage point increase in the rate of plasma use but other factors like changes in the average age of hospitalized patients, and the emergence of new variants of the COVID-19-causing coronavirus also influence the mortality rate.

Even the clinical trials with negative results used plasma mainly as an antiviral treatment did not explore its effect late in the course of COVID-19.

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So, this study urges physicians, policymakers, and regulator to consider the totality of the available evidence including this study findings for making decisions about convalescent plasma use in individual COVID-19 patients.

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Source-Medindia

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