New research from Houston Methodist has concluded that plasma transfusions from recovered COVID-19 patients are a safe and at least somewhat effective treatment option for people still dealing with severe coronavirus symptoms. Out of 25 patients given a transfusion, 19 saw their condition improve and 11 were discharged.
This was the first U.S. convalescent plasma transfusion trial, and participating patients saw no negative or adverse side effects after receiving plasma. There have, however, been smaller studies conducted on blood plasma transfusions for COVID-19 patients. All of those projects came to similar conclusions.
“While physician scientists around the world scrambled to test new drugs and treatments against the COVID-19 virus, convalescent serum therapy emerged as potentially one of the most promising strategies,” comments corresponding study author Dr. James M. Musser, chair of the Department of Pathology and Genomic Medicine at Houston Methodist, in a statement. “With no proven treatments or cures for COVID-19 patients, now was the time in our history to move ahead rapidly.”
This treatment approach for viral diseases certainly isn’t new; blood transfusions were used in the same way during the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918, and more recently during the 2003 SARS pandemic, the 2009 influenza H1N1 outbreak, and the 2015 Ebola outbreak in Africa.
The first signs that plasma transfusions from recovered COVID-19 patients could help others came from China. A small number of Chinese patients showed improvement after receiving blood transfusions. Once news of that project was reported to the team at Houston Methodist, they immediately started thinking about how to apply convalescent serum therapy to COVID-19. – READ MORE
Listen to the insightful Thomas Paine Podcast Below --