Convalescent plasma does not stop disease progression in high-risk covid patients

covid-19 Also known as the recovery period plasma The outpatient (C3PO) trial was discontinued in February 2021 due to lack of efficacy based on a planned interim analysis. The formal conclusions from the trial were published in the current online issue of The New England Journal of Medicine.

“We expected the use of covid-19 convalescent plasma to reduce disease progression in this group by at least 10%, but instead, the observed reduction was less than 2%,” said the University of Pittsburgh. Professor of C3PO Examination and Emergency Medicine. “It was a surprise to us. As doctors, we wanted this to make a big difference in alleviating serious illnesses, but it wasn’t,” Caraway said.

The Indian Medical Research Council (ICMR) also stated at the beginning of May that plasma therapy was not effective in reducing the progression to serious illness or death. Therefore, India’s Top Biomedical Research Institute has excluded convalescent plasma therapy from covid-19’s clinical management guidelines.

Covid-19 convalescent plasma, also known as “survivor plasma,” is plasma from patients who have recovered from the disease. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EAU) permitting the use of convalescent plasma. A covid-19 inpatient who was subsequently approved for treatment in India.

Researchers find out whether administration of covid-19 convalescent plasma is beneficial to those who have recently been infected with the disease-causing virus SARS-CoV-2 but can be treated as an outpatient rather than severely ill. I wanted to. The goal was to prevent the progression to severe covid-19 disease.

The C3PO Trial, launched in August 2020, was designed to answer that question. Randomized controlled trials included adult outpatients who visited the emergency department with mild covid-19 symptoms in the first week after infection.

The study was attended by more than 500 participants from 48 emergency departments across the United States. Participants were racially and ethnically diverse, with a median age of 54, with more than half being female. Participants also had at least one risk factor for progressing to severe covid-19, including obesity, hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, and chronic lung disease.

Researchers randomly assigned participants to treat with high-titer covid-19 convalescent plasma (including anti-covid-19 antibody) or placebo (multivitamin-injected, antibody-deficient salt solution). received.

The researchers compared the results of both groups within 15 days of treatment to determine if the patient needed further urgent or urgent care, was hospitalized, or died.

The researchers found no significant difference in disease progression between the two groups. Of the 511 participants, 77 (30%) in the covid-19 plasma group developed disease progression compared to 81 patients (31.9%) in the placebo group. Researchers found that plasma intervention did not cause any harm.

“Results show that convalescent plasma does not appear to benefit this particular group,” said co-author and co-author of a study in the Blood Epidemiology and Clinical Treatment Division of NHLBI’s Blood Diseases and Resources Division. Naheed El Kassar, one of the medical officers, said. “But the findings may help answer important clinical questions and bring researchers one step closer to finding more effective treatments for this catastrophic disease.”

It’s not clear why the intervention didn’t produce the expected results, Callaway said. Researchers continue to look at possible explanations, including inadequate plasma doses, timing of plasma administration, host-related factors, or other aspects of the host tissue’s response to infection, he added.

Additional studies of covid-19 convalescent plasma are ongoing or planned in different populations. These include NIH-funded national randomized clinical trials that use convalescent plasma to treat inpatients with covid-19 infection and see if treatment helps to recover faster. Includes the “Pass It On Exam” which is an exam. Other studies include outpatients recovering at home and individuals at high risk of exposure to covid-19 to see if convalescent plasma can prevent infection. It will be.

Simone Glynn, Head of Hematology and Clinical Treatment at NHLBI, said: trial.