A New, Large Study Finds Plasma Does Not Lower Risk of Dying from COVID-19

This study had a large sample size and it showed that when plasma is infused in patients who have moderate COVID-19 (similar to severe in other countries), it did not reduce mortality or progression to more critical COVID-19,” Aparna Mukherjee, a scientist in epidemiology and communicable diseases at the Indian Council of Medical Research and one of the co-authors of the study, said in an email response to questions. The results add to the continued debate over how useful convalescent plasma might be as a treatment for COVID-19. Convalescent plasma is one of the oldest therapies that doctors have used in treating infectious diseases, based on the idea that people who are naturally infected and recover will have a ready supply of the proper immune cells needed to fight off the virus or bacteria in question. But because people’s immune systems vary widely, their volume of disease-fighting cells is also unpredictable, and may range from barely adequate levels to extremely rich sources of immune cells. That variability has led to conflicting results on the effectiveness of the therapy, including in this study, which used donated plasma from people who were sick for an average of six days with what the authors describe as mild disease. Two other international studies also failed to find a benefit of convalescent plasma, but those were stopped early because too few eligible patients were enrolled. Other, smaller studies were more encouraging, so in the U.S. the Food a...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news