The results of a study by Johns Hopkins Medicine and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public He alth confirm that recovering plasma used in the early stages of COVID-19 can reduce the risk of hospitalization in outpatients by as much as half.
Plasma of convalescents - people who have recovered from COVID-19 - contains antibodies against this disease, which is why scientists from the first months of the pandemic were looking for the possibility of using it in the infected. The method of using antibodies from convalescent serum, already used in the 19th century, is based on the assumption that plasma components that have already defeated an infection once can do it again.
At the beginning of October 2022, the results of the research of the research team, which included, among others, Oxford scientists - scientists have proven that plasma from convalescents is not effective in treating patients critically ill with COVID-19. The results of the clinical trial were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association - JAMA.
The research conducted by scientists from Johns Hopkins Medicine and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public He alth was conducted from a different angle -investigated the usefulness and effectiveness of plasma from convalescents in patients with COVID-19 who were treated outpatient.
The described study, which was carried out between June 2022 and October 2022, involved a total of 1,181 patients suffering from COVID-19. Each of them received one dose of polyclonal plasma with a high convalescence titer (in other words, containing a concentrated mixture of SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies) or a placebo - plasma without SARS-CoV-2 antibodies.
Plasma was administered eight days after each patient tested positive for COVID-19. The effectiveness of the therapy was measured by the necessity - or not - of hospitalization within 28 days of the transfusion.
The study found that 17 of 592 patients (2.9%) who received recovering plasma required hospitalization within 28 days of transfusion. In the group that received the placebo control plasma, the figure was 37 out of 589 patients (5.3%).This result indicates a relative reduction in the risk of hospitalization by54 percent
As prof. Kelly Anne Gebo from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, co-author of the study: “By early plasma administration of convalescents with high levels of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, the risk of hospitalization can be reduced by more than 50%. Our finding suggests that it is another successful COVID-19 treatment, the benefits of which are low cost, wide availability, and resistance to SARS-CoV-2 evolution. We believe that the best role for healer's plasma isextending its use to early outpatient treatment , especially when other treatments, such as monoclonal antibodies or drugs, are either not readily available or are ineffective. as in the case of SARS-CoV-2 variants which are resistant to certain monoclonal antibodies. "
The expert added thatplasma of healers is the only antibody therapy that "keeps up with the SARS-CoV-2 variants",including the Omicron strain that is spreading around the world as each patient who recovers from an infection caused by a particular variant of SARS-CoV-2 produces antibodies to neutralize it.