Houston (US): Three Indian-Americans, who were hospitalised in a critical condition for COVID-19 here, are showing signs of recovery after being transfused with plasma from the recovered coronavirus patients, hospital sources have said.
As the vaccine for COVID-19 is not expected for months and new cases are increasing daily, doctors in Texas and around the country are experimenting with a new treatment based on an old technique, but aren’t sure if it to be fully effective.
The ‘convalescent plasma’ therapy is a process in which blood plasma from a patient who has recovered from COVID-19 is infused into a critically ill patient so that the specific antibodies present in the blood of the recovered person can help fight the infection. Antibodies are proteins in blood that fight specific bacteria and viruses.
In the absence of a vaccine, doctors and scientists are looking to convalescent plasma because they consider it low risk and because it has been effective during past epidemics.
Three Indian American COVID-19 patients – IT professionals Rohan Bavadekar, Lavanga Veluswamy and Sushm Singh, are being treated at St Luke’s Medical Center in Houston, and have found recently recovered donors with same blood groups for plasma transfusion.
According to hospital sources, they are showing positive signs of recovery and waiting for more donors for new rounds of plasma transfusion.
“Vaccines for broad use would take about 12-18 months, and we don’t have time to wait,” said Lola Adepoju, a health services researcher at the ‘University of Houston College of Medicine’.
“…while those vaccines are being developed, what can we do? (Convalescent plasma) therapy definitely is one of those things we can actually pursue,” said the researcher.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is yet to approve the treatment but is allowing initial clinical trials. Because those trials are limited, doctors nationally can also request for the FDA’s permission to use the treatment for severe COVID-19 cases.
AFP