Convalescent Plasma Therapy and its Century-Old Untapped Potential for COVID-19
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Background: The COVID-19 virus, in terms of pathogenesis and disease spectrum, resembles its predecessor viral strains which caused outbreaks of SARS and MERs. Due to unavailability of approved treatment protocols, healthcare workers initiated treatment of COVID-19 patients with convalescent plasma therapy. Objective: To appraise similarities between the three Coronaviruses and deduce the effectiveness of CP therapy based on exploration of its efficacy in the SARS and MERS outbreaks. Analysis: A narrative review of case reports, randomised controlled trials and meta-analysis studies, on use of CP therapy in SARs and MERS, was conducted. Studies evaluated for the purpose of this review were added through search engines of PubMed Central and Google Scholar. Results: We concluded that CP therapy had been able to play pivotal roles in treating critically-ill SARS and MERS patients. The risks of unintended immunological responses among other factors, hindering CP Therapy’s approval from drug administration authorities, were weighed against favourable chanisms, such as hypercoagulability, that support its use in COVID-19 patients. Conclusion: Findings collected from these studies steered our path to theorize the possibility of reducing mortality with convalescent plasma therapy and support our rallying efforts for enlisting this in the official treatment protocol of COVID-19.
Doi: 10.28991/SciMedJ-2020-0204-6
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