CONVALESCENT PLASMA THERAPY IN COVID-19

         CONVALESCENT PLASMA THERAPY IN COVID-19

-Dr.V.C.Randeep Raj

What is convalescent plasma therapy:

The meaning Convalescent = ‘recovering from an illness’.

Convalescent plasma is also called “immunoglobulins”.

Plasma therapy uses Antibodies found in the blood of people who have recovered from an infection (or convalesced), to treat patients who are infected. People who've recovered from an illness have antibodies to the disease in their blood. This is called as covalescent plasma. This therapy is encouraged and given to the survivors with severe infection to boost their ability to fight against the organism. In fact this is a century-old treatment for infections: Infusion of blood plasma abounding with immune molecules that might help patients beat the infection

Why is convalescent serum used ?

When pathogen strikes host body, the immune system recognises the pathogen and start  making proteins called antibodies , specially designed to target that pathogen.

Those antibodies float in survivors' blood specifically plasma of blood for months, even years.

How does plasma therapy used against covid-19?

COVID-19 is currently a big threat to global health. However, no specific antiviral agents are available for its treatment. So, to overcome this crisis, shifting to plasma transfusion is drawn to rescue severe patients. In this therapy, blood is drawn from a survivor, who has recovered from the infection and the serum is separated and screened for virus-neutralising antibodies.

When attacked by a microbe, our immune systems produce antibodies and in this therapy these antibodies from recovered patients are used to treat other sick people. (Based on the type of severity of Covid-19 infection, immunity develops).

Immunity develops early in asymptomatic or persons with mild symptoms, while it develops later in severe and critically-ill Covid-19 patients.

In the corona virus disease , antibodies attack the spikes on virus and inhibit them from penetrating human cells.

Process of therapy –

-All donors must be diagnosed with COVID-19.

-Donors should have no complaints for at least 14 days after recovery

-Legally, people between the ages of 18-60 can be donors

-The immunized plasma is collected from individual who meet these criteria and stored in blood banks.

How is plasma collected –

-          Takes average of 60-90 minutes.

-          Approximately 200-600 cc of plasma are collected with apheresis devices.

-          Donors are kept under monitoring for 15 minutes after the transaction is complete.

-          Appointments for new plasma donation are made with the consent of the donor.

Goals of the therapy-

a)The goal  is to determine if convalescent plasma can improve the chance of recovery for people with the most severe disease.

b)Second goal is to test whether convalescent plasma can help keep people who are moderately sick from getting sicker.

Drawback of CP therapy-

-it is too laborious and costly than vaccine .

-most of the studies were conducted on a very limited population.

-in most jurisdictions, access to convalescent plasma to covid-19 , may be difficult.

“Everyone recovering from covid-19 disease should become a responsible volunteer plasma donor”.