Convalescent plasma therapy may not have shown benefit in reducing mortality risk among Covid-19 patients as per an interim study by India’s premier research institute AIIMS, Delhi, but an ongoing international study of more than 300 virus-infected patients has suggested otherwise.
The analysis of the ongoing study says that the plasma treatment is safe and effective. The results of the study, titled “Treatment of Covid-19 Patients with Convalescent Plasma Reveals a Signal of Significantly Decreased Mortality,” have appeared in The American Journal of Pathology.
The study which tracked severely ill Covid-19 patients admitted to US’ academic medical Centre Houston Methodist’s system of eight hospitals from March 28 through July 6, holds importance in context of India where several States like Delhi, Telangana and Maharashtra have started plasma therapy to treat the Covid-19 infected patients.
The latest results from Houston Methodist offer valuable scientific evidence that transfusing critically ill-Covid-19 patients with high antibody plasma early in their illness — within 72 hours after hospitalisation proving most effective — reduced the mortality rate.
The study was led by principal investigator Eric Salazar, who is assistant professor of Pathology and Genomic Medicine with the Houston Methodist Hospital and Research Institute, and corresponding author James M Musser chair of the Department of Pathology and Genomic Medicine at Houston Methodist.
The research team found that those treated early with donated plasma with the highest concentration of anti-Covid-19 antibodies are more likely to survive and recover than similar patients who were not treated with convalescent plasma.
“Our studies to date show the treatment is safe and, in a promising number of patients, effective,” Musser said, adding, “ “While convalescent plasma therapy remains experimental and we have more research to do and data to collect, we now have more evidence than ever that this century-old plasma therapy has merit, is safe and can help reduce the death rate from this virus.”
In Delhi, more than 700 Covid-19 patients have been administered convalescent plasma therapy in the last one-and-a-half months since the country’s first plasma bank was set up at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Science at Vasant Kunj.
This even as AIIMS Director Dr Randeep Guleria said that no clear mortality benefit of convalescent plasma therapy was seen during a trial conducted among 30 Covid-19 patients.
“Convalescent plasma therapy did not show benefit in reducing mortality risk among Covid-19 patients, according to an interim analysis of a randomised controlled trial done at AIIMS here to assess the efficacy of this mode of treatment,” said a report quoting Dr Guleria.
However, he clarified that it was just an interim analysis and “that we need to do a more detailed evaluation to see if any sub-group may benefit from plasma therapy.
