Ang Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ay naghahanap ng posibilidad na gamitin ang Plasma mula sa mga naka recover na pasyente ng covid-19 bilang gamot.
Si FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn,tinawag nya itong “convalescent plasma” noong press briefing.
Sabi ni Commissioner:
“This is a pretty exciting area. And again, this is something that we have given assistance to other countries with as the crisis developed,” Hahn said, emphasizing that its effectiveness in treating the virus has not yet been proven.
Saad pa sa Latin Post:
Dr. Arturo Casadevall, chair for molecular microbiology and immunology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has been leading a team of researchers from across the country studying the possibility of using plasma from coronavirus survivors on treating critically ill patients.
“They didn’t have vaccines in the early 20th century-just like the situation we face now. But physicians then knew that, for certain conditions, you could take the blood of the immuned and use it to prevent the disease or treat those who became ill,” Casadevall said.
Convalescent plasma has proven to be effective against other infectious diseases, such as rabies and diphtheria, according to Mike Ryan, head of health emergencies program at the World Health Organization (WHO).
“What hyperimmune globulin does is it concentrates the antibodies in a recovered patient, essentially giving the victim’s immune system a boost of antibodies, hopefully to help them get through the difficult phase,” Ryan said.
The treatment, which involves harvesting virus-fighting antibodies from the blood of previously infected patients is nothing new in medicine after being used many times before, like the SARS outbreak in 2002 and the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918.
“Until more effective drug treatments are ready, this might be our best option,” he said.
Because there is blood transfusion involved in the treatment, experts cannot guarantee that the procedure is 100% glitch-free. There is the danger of transfusing the wrong type of blood or inadvertently contracting other pathogens during the transmission. But medical experts already have a precaution for that.
Blood banks would need to conduct tests to determine if donors have antibodies that can kill the virus.
However, not everyone is sold to the idea of using blood plasma to cure the disease. Cedric Ghevaert, Senior Lecturer in Transfusion Medicine at the University of Cambridge and Consultant Hematologist at NHS Blood and Transplant, has some concerns given that some points of the treatment are not yet discussed.
“Given the speed of spreading of the epidemics, arranging collection, distribution, quality control, dosage may simply be a case of shutting the door after the horse has bolted,” Ghevaert said, adding that while the technique works well for ‘blood-borne agents’, its reaction with the SARS- CoV-2 virus is still in question.
Despite concerns on the possible side effects of the treatments, the approach has already been implemented in China, where the disease is believed to have started.