In a new study, researchers found that convalescent plasma therapy is safe and effective to treat COVID-19.
They tested more than 300 COVID-19 patients treated with the therapy.
The results offer valuable evidence that transfusing critically ill COVID-19 patients with high antibody plasma early in their illness – within 72 hours after hospitalization proving most effective – reduced the mortality rate.
The research was conducted by a team at Houston Methodist.
The results, which appear now in, represents one of the first peer-reviewed publications in the country assessing the efficacy of convalescent plasma.
From March 28, when Houston Methodist became the first academic medical center in the nation to infuse critically ill COVID-19 patients with plasma donated from recovered patients, research physicians have used the treatment on 350 patients.
The study tracked severely ill COVID-19 patients admitted to Houston Methodist’s system of eight hospitals from March 28 through July 6.
The research team found that those treated early in their illness with donated plasma that has the highest concentration of anti-COVID-19 antibodies are more likely to survive and recover than similar patients who were not treated with convalescent plasma.
Patients with a history of severe reactions to blood transfusions, those with underlying uncompensated and untreatable end-stage disease, and patients with fluid overload or other conditions that would increase the risk of plasma transfusion were excluded.
The patients were tracked for 28 days after plasma transfusion and compared to a control group of similar COVID-19 patients who did not receive convalescent plasma.
Several studies have measured safety, showing that the more than 34,000 COVID-19 patients in the U.S. who have received plasma transfusions for COVID-19 experienced minimal adverse effects.
One author of the study is Eric Salazar, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of Pathology and Genomic Medicine.
The study is published in The American Journal of Pathology.
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