Author Topic: Blood plasma therapy for COVID-19 patients coming to more Houston hospitals  (Read 340 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Elderberry

  • TBR Contributor
  • *****
  • Posts: 24,274
Houston Chronicle by  Todd Ackerman April 9, 2020

The experimental therapy transfusing the blood plasma of people who have recovered from COVID-19 into patients fighting the disease is coming to more Houston-area hospitals.

Baylor College of Medicine and the Gulf Coast Regional Blood Center are partnering to make the potentially therapeutic plasma available to hospitals that get the Food and Drug Administration’s permission to transfuse it into patients. Baylor will screen and test interested donors and the blood center will collect the plasma and get it to hospitals.

“We’re creating a community resource so that more hospitals can use this treatment,” said Dr. Ashok Balasubramanyam, senior associate dean for academic affairs patients at Baylor. “This will ensure there’s a seamless process for hospitals to get a good product made by the blood center.”

The Houston medical school quietly has transfused such plasma into five patients at Baylor St. Luke’s Medical Center. Through the partnership, enabled by a newly approved FDA study, the Houston medical school will collect data on how patients fare and on the therapy and report the findings to the FDA.

More: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/health/article/Blood-plasma-therapy-for-COVID-19-patients-coming-15190210.php

Offline truth_seeker

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 28,386
  • Gender: Male
  • Common Sense Results Oriented Conservative Veteran
I heard this called convalescent plasma therapy. (or serum therapy)

St. Joseph's hospital,  Orange CA about one week ago, called "first time that location)
"God must love the common man, he made so many of them.�  Abe Lincoln

Offline Elderberry

  • TBR Contributor
  • *****
  • Posts: 24,274
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Methodist-transfuses-blood-into-2-more-COVID-19-15178447.php

Quote
The FDA in late March approved the therapy as an “emergency investigational new drug,” meaning a hospital could request that the agency allow its use each time there was a good candidate. Now that there’s no such regulation, hospitals can provide the therapy to any patients who meet the trial protocol without the FDA’s case-by-case involvement.

Such FDA fast-tracking is rare. The agency sometimes acts quickly to grant individuals’ access to experimental drugs on a compassionate basis, but it typically takes a public health crisis to do so on such a wide scale.

“This is an important area of research — the use of products made from a recovered patient’s blood to potentially treat COVID-19,” said FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, who previously served as a top administrator at MD Anderson Cancer Center. “The FDA played a key role in organizing a partnership between industry, academic institutions, and government agencies to facilitate expanded access to convalescent plasma.”

Forty institutions are taking part in the clinical trial, which is being led by the Mayo Clinic and John Hopkins University. Methodist is working with Baylor College of Medicine for the trial’s Houston arm.