Plasma from COVID-19 survivors to be used for treatment
NEW YORK: Blood donation centres across the United States will collect plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 that will be used for treating others infected with the pandemic disease.
AABB, an international non-profit agency focused on transfusion medicine and cellular therapies, has issued a new set of guidelines under which dozens of community blood centres in US will collect plasma from COVID-19 survivors that would become a key source for the century-old treatment known as convalescent plasma therapy.
The convalescent plasma therapy uses blood products taken from people who have recovered from a viral infection and injects them into those still suffering.
The practice was used during the devastating 1918 flu, as well as to treat measles in the 1930s. In recent years, plasma therapy been used to treat victims of Ebola, SARS and H1N1 influenza. Recent studies suggest that using the plasma help in reducing symptoms and death in past outbreaks to some extent. However, its true efficacy has not been proved in rigorous clinical trials as yet
In the current COVID-19 outbreak, anecdotal evidence from China shows that passive antibody therapy appears to help sick patients fight off COVID-19 until they can develop antibodies on their own. Given that there’s no treatment or vaccine for COVID-19, experts say there is no harm in using this option.
The new guidelines come a week after the federal Food and Drug Administration authorized the emergency use of convalescent plasma by doctors for individual patients who are critically ill with COVID-19.
This holds significance sine the number of confirmed global cases of coronavirus infections and fatalities due to the deadly virus has seen a rapid escalation in the past 24 hours, with over 1 lakh new cases reported in the past 24 hours.
The spread of the deadly virus, since it first originated in China, has reached 205 countries.
