Plasma Therapy: New Hope for COVID-19 or Still Unproven?
Plasma Therapy: New Hope for COVID-19 or Still Unproven?
All over the world, researchers and healthcare professionals are scrambling to find a way to slow down the novel coronavirus.
On 20 April, a critical COVID-19 patient in Delhi's max hospital requested to be put on the experimental plasma treatment therapy and showed promising results.
He was shortly weaned off from ventilator support. A few days later, on april 26, he had recovered completely and the 49-year-old patient was discharged.
However, on April 29, in Mumbai's Lilavati hospital, a 53-year-old COVID-19 patient, the first in the state to undergo the experimental plasma treatment passed away.
Just a day before, on 28 April, the union health ministry said that plasma treatment was not a proven therapy or treatment option for COVID-19.
What is this experimental treatment and is there hope to be found in it?
How does it work?
There is a process called passive immunity, where if a person is critically ill with a viral infection we can actually inject into this patient's bodies pre-formed anti-bodies. Now how do we get these anti-bodies?
“Imagine a situation where there is a patient that has had COVID-19infection in the past and has successfully recovered from it. Now this person has recovered from his body had produced anti-bodies, the protective anti-bodies.”
Dr Budhiraja adds, “The procedure is very simple, we basically connect the donor to a separator, the plasma is taken out. We take about 400 ml of plasma from one donor.
“It’s very early days to really say the ultimate outcome. And there are many factors involved in recovery.”
So to sum up, plasma therapy is not a new treatment option and can only be used un the experimental stage to aid severely ill patients so far. Doctors are trying to see if one COVID-19 recovered person’s anti-body rich blood plasma can help save another infected person.
How Effective is This?
One of the benefits of this therapy is that it is a tried and tested method. Versions of this have existed to treat the Spanish Flu of 1918 and another coronavirus’ like SARS in 2003 and MERS in 2012.
And with new technology, chances are it will be more effective.
It is also considered to be a low-risk treatment. But another critical care doctor we spoke with say plasma therapy is no magic bullet. They point to possible lung damage as well.
The danger lies in the unknown. COVID-19 is a new disease and the pool to test this on is not that large.
Officially, ICMR does not recommend it outside of clinical trials.
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