When looking at potential treatments for the COVID-19 coronavirus could the antibody treatment already tested in China, and similar treatments being developed in other countries, be a viable solution to protect those who are the most vulnerable (immune compromised and frontline health workers) from catching this illness?
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/19/21186569/blood-coronavirus-patients-treatments-infection-covid-19
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/138003 - “The convalescent sera option for containing COVID-19”
This article gives a detailed explanation of how antibodies taken from the blood of patients who became infected with a viral pathogen and subsequently recover has been used to protect and treat other patients. This type of treatment is not new and there our reports that it has already been successfully tried in China on patients with COVID-19.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/19/21186569/blood-coronavirus-patients-treatments-infection-covid-19
Blood from recovered COVID-19 patients is a key resource for scientists
When a new virus like the novel coronavirus appears and starts infecting people, one critical asset in the fight against it is blood from people who were sick and then recovered. These blood samples can help scientists understand how the immune system responds to it, and can help in the search for therapies to treat the disease.
That’s why, this week, the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institutes of Health put out a call looking for blood donations from people who had COVID-19 and are now healthy. . .
Preliminary research (that hasn’t yet been published) on COVID-19 patients shows that they do produce high levels of antibodies, which virologists say is a sign people wouldn’t get sick from the virus a second time. Another still unpublished study on monkeys found that they developed antibodies after they were infected with the novel coronavirus, and they didn’t get sick a second time if they were exposed to the virus again. “It indicates that infection results in protective immunity against SARS-CoV, at least in the short term,” Angela Rasmussen, a research scientist at the Center for Infection and Immunity at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, wrote in an email to The Scientist.
Scientists also turn to the blood of patients who have recovered from COVID-19 as a possible stopgap treatment for the most at-risk people. Because their blood plasma is presumably full of protective substances like antibodies, if it’s injected into sick people, it may help them fight off disease. It’s an old strategy and dates back as far as the 1918 Spanish flu outbreak in the United States, when doctors reported that it helped reduce the number of deaths in seriously ill patients. Recently, it’s been used on an experimental basis to treat people with MERS, H1N1, and Ebola. . . .
The treatment is risky, though, and there are always concerns that the use of plasma could make any subsequent infection with the virus in question worse. It would likely only be a temporary measure until more refined treatments became available. But the benefits may outweigh the risks for health care workers or older people who are more likely to become seriously ill if they were infected with the virus. . . .
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/138003 - “The convalescent sera option for containing COVID-19”
This article gives a detailed explanation of how antibodies taken from the blood of patients who became infected with a viral pathogen and subsequently recover has been used to protect and treat other patients. This type of treatment is not new and there our reports that it has already been successfully tried in China on patients with COVID-19.
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