Why U.S. hospitals see promise in plasma from recovered Coronavirus patients

U.S. hospitals desperate to help very sick patients with COVID-19, the highly contagious respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus, are trying a treatment first used in the 1890s that relies on blood plasma donated by recovered patients.

People who survive an infectious disease like COVID-19 are generally left with blood containing antibodies, or proteins made by the body's immune system to fight off a virus. The blood component that carries the antibodies can be collected and given to newly infected patients - it is known as "convalescent plasma."

More than 275,000 Americans have tested positive for COVID-19, and epidemiologists say hundreds of thousands more likely have the disease.

To help match donors to hospitals, the AABB, formerly the American Association of Blood Banks, this week issued guidelines on plasma collection. The American Red Cross also launched an online registry for potential donors.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday announced an "expanded access" program for convalescent plasma, coordinated by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, aimed at making it easier for hospitals across the country to collect and use plasma.

"Historically, this has worked," said Dr. Jeffrey Henderson, associate professor of medicine and molecular microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “Before we had vaccines, this was used for infectious diseases like measles and diphtheria."

Convalescent plasma was also successfully used during the 1918 flu pandemic, he said.

Doctors say protocols, such as dosage, are still uncertain for COVID-19 patients, but they believe the method is worth trying, at least until an effective COVID-19 vaccine or treatment is developed.

The Mayo Clinic and other U.S. sites are conducting a clinical study. Similar trials are under way in other countries

So slow. Takes 5-12 days just to get a Wuhan China virus test results. My guess is it takes 6 months to get this test results back. This centralization BS has become a bureaucracy joke of giant deadly proportions.

Give me 2 days and I could have a 200 bead hospital running, 3 hour (or less) testing, 3 treatment protocols running, and 100 at Armed guards to keep the FDA, CDC, FEDGOV, WHO away from interfering.

This has become a giant fedgov circle jerk. I am so disappointed in our cowardly country. Seems like lawyers and politicians run everything.

Interesting history of "Convalescent Plasma" therapy published three days ago at...

Before Vaccines, Doctors ‘Borrowed’ Antibodies from Recovered Patients to Save Lives
The very first Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was awarded in 1901 to Emil von Behring for his life-saving work developing a cure for diphtheria, a bacterial infection that was particularly fatal in children. His groundbreaking treatment, known as diphtheria antitoxin, worked by injecting sick patients with antibodies taken from animals who had recovered from the disease.
Von Behring’s antitoxin wasn’t a vaccine, but the earliest example of a treatment method called “convalescent plasma” that’s being resurrected as a potential treatment for COVID-19. Convalescent plasma is blood plasma extracted from an animal or human patient who has “convalesced” or recovered from infection with a particular disease.
“Convalescent plasma has been used throughout history when confronting an infectious disease where you have people who recover and there’s no other therapy available,” says Warner Greene, director of the Center for HIV Cure Research at the Gladstone Institutes. “There must be something in their plasma—i.e. an antibody—that helped them recover.”
Convalescent plasma interacts differently with the immune system than a vaccine. When a person is treated with a vaccine, their immune system actively produces its own antibodies that will kill off any future encounters with the target pathogen. That’s called active immunity.
Convalescent plasma offers what’s called “passive immunity.” The body doesn’t create its own antibodies, but instead “borrows” them from another person or animal who has successfully fought off the disease. Unlike a vaccine, the protection doesn’t last a lifetime, but the borrowed antibodies can greatly reduce recovery times and even be the difference-maker between life and death.
“Convalescent plasma is the crudest of the immunotherapies, but it can be effective,” says Greene.

It's amazing that the history of convalescent plasma goes all the way back to the 1890s. It's equally amazing that the researchers at the time thought to remove the blood cells from blood leaving behind the plasma.

My 72 year old chain smoking neighbor recovered from the virus..

Yes. You are reading it correctly.

2 weeks ago he was sent home to die because the hospital rant out of respirators. Chest pains were intense and he slept it off...for 5 days. 6th day the fever broke. Went back to the same stupid hospital which left him for dead and tested negative.

Now they are BEGGING him to donate plasma. I kid you not.

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