COVID-19 series #4 - Convalescent Plasma Therapy for the rescue ??

As #Coronavirus continues to kill thousands of people worldwide, there's a window of opportunity known as ‘Convalescent Plasma Therapy’ (CPT) for treating the infection to overcome this pandemic.

CPT is a treatment that aims at making an individual immune to a particular disease/bacteria/virus. In this therapy, the antibodies from the blood of a patient who has recovered from a particular infection are transferred to the one who is critically ill with that infection. In this therapy, the body doesn’t create its own antibodies, but instead “borrows” them from another person or animal who has successfully fought off the disease and is now immune to it. Convalescent plasma therapy is akin to passive immunization.

This is not the first time that scientists and researchers are trying convalescent plasma therapy. It was used to treat patients during Spanish flu, during 1918, Hantavirus during World war 2, SARS epidemic in 2003 and the Ebola outbreak in 2013.

As mentioned earlier, any person who has become immune to the infection and recovered from it is used to donate blood that contains antibodies which will help another critically ill patient who is battling the infection. Unlike regular blood donation, plasma can be donated more frequently, as often as twice a week. There are no harmful effects of donating plasma and is completely safe, as long as it is done at a government or private hospital under a licensed doctor’s supervision. So if you are someone who has recovered from the infection and is in the pink of your health, disease free, follow up with your doctor to donate blood and be the knight is someone’s shining armor – Save a life.

- Rachna Jadhav

@theresilientresearcher