While various therapies and treatments have proved their own success and failure at curing COVID-19 infected patients, the new in the league was plasma therapy which gained a lot of popularity within a short time.
States over the country, including Telangana, are consistently using the Convalescent Plasma Therapy to help patients by reducing the symptoms or lowering the mortality rate. However, this hasn’t shown any significant amount of effect during all its treatment regimes, say researchers even when doctors are suggesting the use of the same.
Opposite to the current scenario of India where the CP therapy use is attracting many people, the US’s Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) declared the momentary hold for giving emergency approval to the treatment last week. The decision came amid received data which proved that there wasn’t enough evidence to support it. However, it has approved the same again on August 24th, halting the full approval for public use.
The US rejected the plasma therapy needs to be taken into consideration while choosing it as a potential cure for coronavirus infected individuals.
However, the Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and the State Health departments had inched carefully towards the treatment since the start. The Health Ministry had labeled plasma therapy as an “investigational therapy”. Moreover, the Director of Public Health (DPH), Telangana, Dr. G SrinivasaRao, and Director of Medical Education Dr. K Ramesh Reddy had proclaimed the taking up of the therapy solely for a group of patients saying that it isn’t useful for all.
The DPH had further brought to light the Randomized Control Trial (RCT) carried out by New Delhi’s AIIMS in his recent briefing with the reporters. He spoke about the study’s results on the efficiency of plasma therapy where the hospital’s research wing did the trial on 30 subjects. According to the study, there was ‘no clear mortality benefit of plasma therapy on the subjects who participated in the trials.’
Stressing on the fact that plasma therapy isn’t the straight road to success for treating COVID-19 patients, Mr. SrinivasRao cautioned healthcare facilities, more so the privately running hospitals, from employing CP therapy.
This treatment has been a part of the medical therapies since the Spanish Flu of 1918 and probably before it too. The results brought out from the disease of Spain had mixed reports. More recently, global researchers are using it to fight Middle-East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), Ebola and SARS, although the rate of success changed with each use and patient.
Plasma therapy works on the production of antibodies in patients recovered from the virus. These antibodies can then be used to fight the disease in another individual in whom all other treatment modalities fail. However, patients needing ventilator support cannot be given this, as it can only be provided and proved minutely beneficial if anything, in patients with moderate symptoms.
According to the USFDA and MOHFW, the hard and fast rules need to be applied for the use of plasma therapy because of the lack of solid evidence supporting faster recovery or reduced chances of death in patients administered with the plasma.
With the results from the study of a major group of researchers and authorities in the US, the FDA pulled back its EUA to plasma therapy, giving in to the approval once again as it was found to be safe in patients who got it.
The director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research of the FDA, Peter Marks said, “It appeared that the product is safe and we’re comfortable with that and we continue to see no concerning safety signals.”
However, currently, the internet is flooded with requests mentioning the urgent need of plasma, which is blood without the inclusion of red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets, for patients of different blood groups in Hyderabad and its adjoining cities.
