Plasma treatment tested in New York may be coronavirus ‘game changer’

Older therapies adapted to new illnesses are being tested in New York as COVID-19 patients continue to be poured into emergency departments and intensive care units across the country.

In the past few days, the Mount Sinai Hospital System has infused more than 20 highly ill coronavirus patients with a “convalescent serum” based on the plasma of individuals who have already recovered from the disease.

One of the first patients to recover from a donation, Danny Reamer, a 37-year-old in New Rochelle, New York, states that he and his wife are able to volunteer their plasma to help others Felt “blessed”. “And despite the fact that we got the virus, our ideas are really with others, those who are fighting the virus, and those who have experienced events much more serious than us. “

“We are very ill,” said Dr. Jeffreyjan, medical director of the clinical laboratory and transfusion services at Mount Sinai Health System in New York. “We believe this is a game changer and will really accelerate the recovery of these patients.”

As originally reported so series of story By NBCNews.com, Dr. Arturo Casadevall of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore has spearheaded a nationwide effort to develop plasma therapy for coronavirus.

of National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project Is collecting 22 plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients to help treat currently sick patients and possibly prevent other people, including frontline healthcare professionals, from 22 states. Is a consortium of top medical institutions in more than 40 countries. Infect the virus.

Convalescent plasma therapy, which collects antibodies from the blood of a recovered patient, is not new. Previously used to treat SARS, H1N1, and Ebola in addition to the 1918 and 1957 influenza pandemics, but more recently to treat some COVID-19 patients in China .

However, in recent weeks, microbiologist Dr. Florian Cranmer and a team at Icahn Medical School on Mt. Sinai have brought breakthrough results to COVID-19 antibody testing.

“Other tests measure the presence of antibodies, but our assays can measure the amount of antibodies,” Jhang said. “And this is important because we can identify donors with the highest amounts of antibodies that are most likely to benefit patients receiving this plasma.”

It is thought that the more antibodies, the more effective the treatment.

Jhang said the hospital is currently conducting tests using the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) emergency license, but has issued a formal protocol to allow more hospitals to use the Mount Sinai test He said he was discussing.

Friday, FDA issued An up-to-date set of guidelines that remind health care providers that more clinical trials need to be performed before “periodic dosing” of convalescent plasma to COVID-19 patients.

Jhang said that waiting for enough COVID-19 patients to fully recover and develop an immune response to screen is part of the task of implementing this practice extensively. Each donor represents four doses of plasma. At Sinai, sick patients receive two doses. In the past few days, Mount Sinai has given more than 20 very ill patients the plasma of recovered humans.

Dr. Jean said that Sinai called for recruitment of plasma donors, contacted patients who had recovered, emailed 40,000 staff, and nearly 10,000 volunteered within days. It turned out that not everyone who actually volunteered was suffering from the disease, but hospital staff are now screening their abilities for motivation, but the response was encouraging.

Danny Reamer was one of the first patients to answer this call.

“For those who are recovering from the virus and thinking about what they can do, I think this is probably the least heroic way to become a hero,” Reemer said. “It’s as if the survivor could give the liferaft to the next person in need of it.”

Reamer and his wife Sheila, 35, received a notification early March that they may have contacted an individual who tested positive for a deadly virus. They were told to isolate themselves from the New York State Department of Health and within a few days symptoms began to appear. They were both positive, but experienced only “mild symptoms” that did not require hospitalization. They recovered at home with three children—no one got sick.

Danny and Sheila heard about a project on Mount Sinai through family friends. Danny said that the moment they were released from quarantine, he and his wife went to take a test of the program.

He was able to donate plasma after receiving the news that Reamer’s COVID-19 test showed he was no longer ill and that his antibody test resulted in a high return later last week. Was. “It was easy. A needle was stuck in my arm. The machine did the job, and I caught up with the job and relaxed there a bit,” said Reamer.

Sheila was initially ineligible because her nasal swabs were still returning positive for the disease. In a fourth attempt this week, she found that she did not have COVID-19, but is waiting to hear if she has enough antibodies to become a donor.

Researchers and practitioners National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project Is working to determine the best patient to receive convalescent plasma, says Dr. Michael Joiner, one of the project leaders, a professor of anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic School of Medicine.

“Historically, if such products were used for other diseases, it would be best to provide them earlier in the course of the disease, compared to earlier in the course of the disease.” Joiner said ICU and non-ICU inpatients are being considered.

“So I tell the people, we are trying to help the frontline people put their fingers on the embankment,” he said. “And we are also waiting for biotech and vaccine cavalry to arrive.”

Just last week, doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota donated convalescent plasma from those who recovered from COVID-19. The plasma is most likely to go to patients who want to stay out of the ICU.

Joiner states that the Mayo Clinic is in a unique position. “The pandemic is a bit slow to reach us,” he said. “We are probably two or three weeks away from the peak, as opposed to a week or five days here from the peak, so we have time to plan.”

But given the demand for innovation that could mitigate the consequences of infection, the practice is already being implemented at record speeds, according to Joiner.

last FridayFDA Approves Clinical Trial and Prevents Johns Hopkins Researchers from Using Convalescent Plasma to Boost the Immune System, including Frontline Healthcare Professionals at High Risk for Exposure to COVID-19 To be able to test.

“This is a normal process, and it will probably take about 18 months from start to finish, because things happen in a row,” he said. “We were doing them in parallel, so we could do them somewhere between 8-18 days.”