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Plasma Therapy has been approved by the government as a potential treatment for seriously ill COVID-19 patients which proved inefficient. What now?
A study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has revealed that the use of convalescent plasma therapy in COVID-19 patients does not help in reducing deaths or preventing the disease seriousness.
The researchers at ICMR have aimed to check the effectiveness of plasma therapy as it has been widely spread as a potential treatment for critical COVID-19 patients.
On August 23, the US Food and Drug Administration also issued an emergency use authorization for plasma therapy as a COVID-19 treatment.
A randomized controlled trial called PLACID has been conducted in 39 hospitals across India from April 22 to July 14. A total of 464 moderately ill COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized were enrolled for this study.
Of the 434 patients, 235 were given the convalescent plasma along with the best of standard care and 229 patients have received only normal care.
The primary outcome of the 44 of these patients was received in the intervention arm and 41 in the control arm. Mortality was documented in 34 and 31 patients in the intervention and control arms respectively.
The study has been published in the pre print server medRxiv.
As the hospital authorities and the family members continue to request for plasma donations, and the states in the country have been setting up plasma banks, this study comes as a shocker to all of them. Will ICMR change its protocols now?
The Problems with Plasma Therapy
Plasma treatment is an investigational therapy for off label use in coronavirus infected patients. In this process, the antibodies of the recovered COVID-19 patients will be taken through blood and will be injected into the body of critical patients who are suffering from the same.
The theoretical benefit of plasma therapy is that it helps boost the immunity in those patients who were not developing them naturally.
But, the problem with COVID-19 is not about accurate immune response but in severe patients, the immune response goes haywire.
Our immune system works in mysterious ways and with the COVID-19 disease, it is generating a dysregulated immune response rather than no immune response at all.
According to a study from the Netherlands, 70 percent of the COVID-19 patients already have antibodies and there is no point in injecting more antibodies.
The problem with COVID-19 is not about antibodies but with the complicated immune response.
Plasma therapy was previously used for certain diseases and it has proven to be efficient. But, this is not the case with COVID-19 as plasma therapy might increase the chance of blood clotting in COVID-19 patients which can lead to death.
As COVID-19 is a respiratory disease, plasma infusion can cause lung injury.
Plasma therapy is normally given to increase the clotting of blood but here clotting is already a problem.
Moreover, the treatment does not reduce the risk of death.
By Gayatri Yellayi
