Analysis Shows Convalescent Plasma Could Reduce COVID-19 Deaths by 57%
Sandra Rodrigo, a patient recovered from the COVID19, is connected to an apheresis unit which separates the blood into its various components, in La Paz, Bolivia.
With the current global health crisis continuing to infect people all over the world, scientists are still in search for an effective vaccine, medicine, or treatment.
Recently, a study was published indicating that convalescent antibody-rich plasma reduces the death rate in COVID-19 patients confined at the hospital, by an astonishing 57 percent.
It has been more than a century that convalescent plasma is being eyed as a source of passive immunity.
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What Formerly Conducted Studies Indicate
Researchers combined the data coming from various kinds of tests--RCTs, case series, case or control studies--to get a cumulative approximation of the overall mortality rate.
The combined analysis involved more than 800 patients, between 48 and 70 years of age, with a higher percentage of male participants in most studies.
Furthermore, the majority of the patients included experienced serious or critical COVID-19 infection and had received plasma transfusion.
While transfusion is ongoing, up to 80 percent of patients had reportedly been placed on ventilation. Following this, patients were monitored from seven to 30 days.
Dramatic Decline in Death Rate
Scientists discovered that the death rates were relatively low in all the course series from zero to 13 percent.
Data showed that among the RCTs, the rates were said to be lower at 13 percent among the patients who underwent transfusion, compared to 16 percent among patients who did not go through transfusion.
Consequently, the mortality rates were lowered by an estimate of 54 and 60 percent in patients, who were given convalescent plasma, in the RCTs and case-control studies, respectively.
The scientists also adjusted for factors including age, need for mechanical ventilation, and even for varying periods of follow-up, and did not find any considerable difference in the decrease in death rate.
The said group of researchers came up with a conclusion that their evaluation of the results of patients who got convalescent plasma presented a marked drop in death rate in the respondents compared to the same patients who did not.
The results favor the effectiveness of the said plasma as a therapeutic agent for the deadly infectious disease.
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How Convalescent Plasma Can Help
The most probable explanation for such a therapy's effectiveness is that the plasma consists of neutralizing antibodies, preventing the infection from getting into the host cells.
Research findings also indicated that other living mechanisms may operate, as well. Such results aligned with the same evaluations of past data from convalescent plasma tests for infectious illnesses like the 1918 flu epidemic and H1N1 influenza.
The meta-analysis is said to be restricted by its addition of various research with a wide disparity in the country of origin, as well as the study's chronological background, with relation to the worldwide course of the pandemic, the diagnostic and healing norms in each patient regimen, as well as the antibody concentration in the use of convalescent plasma and the transfused volume of plasma.
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