Covid-19 Treatment: ‘Plasma therapy holds hope’

Convalescent Plasma therapy, which can quickly develop passive immune system of a person against a virus and fight Covid-19, can help save lives from the curse of the novel coronavirus before any vaccine or medicine is developed, a noted hematologist has said.

Medical researches in the US and China as well other studies have found that those who recover from Covid-19 develop neutralising antibody in their blood plasma, said Prof MA Khan of Bone Marrow Transplantation at the Department of Hematology of Dhaka Medical College Hospital.

"This neutralising antibody, if transfused into the body of an infected person, can destroy the virus. As a result, the patient's viral load, fever and inflammation of lung are checked. Thus he can recover early," he told The Daily Star on April 16.

"Transfusion of convalescent plasma which contain neutralising antibody might be used as empirical treatment to develop passive immunity in the patient's body and thus virus cannot affect anymore," said Dr Khan, a pioneering figure of bone marrow transplantation in Bangladesh.

The new therapy, which has undergone successful trials in the US and China, seems holding promise in saving lives as there is no medicine for Covid-19 available yet, and that the drugs under trial may take months for mass production, the hematologist said.

Presently, only supportive care is given to the Covid-19 patients, and more than 165,903 people have already died worldwide. In Bangladesh, at least a hundred people, including a doctor died with 2,948 confirmed cases found so far.

"The elderly people who are critically ill and health workers could be the priority groups for administration of this plasma therapy, because if doctors and health personnel die due to infection, who will take care of the  patients?" said Dr Khan .

It is better to administer the COVID-19 plasma therapy in the initial stage of infection. In that case, its effectiveness level is much higher than that of the critical stage, 

"The reason is that initially organism or virus is likely to be much smaller than that of established disease as well check the cytokine storm."

Trials are going on in different states in the US and China to learn of more precision of the plasma therapy.

Plasma therapy was used effectively before the specific treatment was developed for H1N1 influenza (Spanish virus), Ebola, SARS-1 and MERS virus, he said.

"I have already proposed to the Communicable Disease Control unit of the DG health. If they approve, we need to develop a protocol and then go for administering the therapy as a trial basis initially," he said.

Protocol means the rules of how to collect plasma, its preservation method, how to measure the level of antibody at the donor's plasma, dosing as well as measuring the outcome of the therapy etc.

As there are many patients recovering from Covid-19, it is very much possible to introduce the plasma therapy in Bangladesh, he added.

"What we need to do is to prepare a database of those who recovered from covid-19 and then take their consent for plasma collection. Accordingly, we can collect plasma maintaining the protocol," he said.

There is no legal bar for collecting plasma. It's more or less safe and like the way people donate blood, he said. Any recovered person of 18 to 60 yrs age group with 50kg body weight without diseases like HBV, HCB, HIV, malaria, syphilis can donate plasma.

"People should be inspired to donate plasma. We need to save lives with whatever options available we have," Dr Khan said.