At the start of the pandemic, plasma treatments were being used by convalescents as possibly the most effective treatment in the world against the virus, but more recent information shows they haven’t helped much at all in the fight against Covid.
Reports from Wuhan, China, ground zero of the pandemic, released in March and April, found the treatment, which involves using donated plasma from a Covid survivor to treat future patients, carried the risk of developing more severe symptoms or even the could reduce death.
While each of the three studies only enrolled an average of seven patients each, this was the best that health officials had to work with.
With the world in turmoil, the world population terrified and there was no time to wait for clinical trials when the virus broke out worldwide, these types of plasma treatments were widely used.
Now JAMA writes that these treatments may not have had the effect once believed and are being phased out from frontline treatment.
There is a growing trove of evidence that convalescent plasma treatments do little to prevent in-hospital COVID-19 patient deaths. Proponents of the treatment argue that it should be used long before a patient is hospitalized. Pictured: A man in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, is treated by a nurse for COVID-19 symptoms on January 11
“We moved on… convalescent plasma is a great thing to think about very early in a pandemic,” said Dr. Kevin Schulman, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, told JAMA.
Recently published studies have found little, if any, effectiveness of plasma treatments.
An NYU Grossman study published in January involving 2,400 patients found little difference in clinical outcomes between patients treated with plasma compared to others.
A study published in August, led by Michigan researchers and involving more than 11,000 patients, also found little effectiveness.
Earlier this year, the Infectious Disease Society of America officially discouraged the use of plasma treatment.
Treatments have largely been replaced by monoclonal antibody treatments, which have similar putative functions.
Like plasma, the monoclonal antibodies provide the body’s immune system with additional resources to fight the virus and neutralize infected cells.
While monoclonal treatments have their own doubters – and some criticize their prioritization due to the high amount of resources they use to administer them – they have been accepted as an effective Covid treatment worldwide.
However, not everyone is ready to bury plasma treatments just yet.
dr Arturo Casadevall, the head of the National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project, said the drug wasn’t used properly in the studies.
Like monoclonal antibodies and oral antivirals like Paxlovid, plasma treatments are most effective when used early in the infection.
dr Arturo Casadevall (pictured), leader of the National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project, authored a study showing the treatment is over 50% effective in preventing hospitalizations
Casadevall argues that the treatment was ineffective because it was only used on patients who were already in the hospital.
A study authored by a Johns Hopkins University professor found that plasma treatments can reduce the risk of hospitalization by more than 50 percent when used early in the infection stage. The study is still in the peer review phase before full publication.
There’s also the possibility that the dosages of plasma treatment used by hospitals across the country were simply too small to have any effect.
“It could easily be argued that we underdosed patients … our study was the best we could do at the time,” Schulman said of a Stanford University study of the drug that also showed little benefit.
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