Methodist transfuses blood into 2 more COVID-19 patients

[Elderberry]

Houston Chronicle by  Todd Ackerman April 4, 2020

Houston Methodist Hospital transfused blood from recovered COVID-19 patients into two additional severely ill patients Friday, the same day the federal government made it easier for people afflicted with the coronavirus to receive the experimental therapy.

Doctors offered the therapy to the new patients just before the Food and Drug Administration approved a clinical trial that allows research hospitals to transfuse patients without applying for permission each time, Methodist said in a news release.

Four total patients at Methodist now have received what’s known as convalescent serum therapy, a concept that dates back to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic. Methodist appeared to become the nation’s first hospital to try the approach in COVID-19 patients when it transfused the blood plasma of a recovered patient into two patients in critical condition March 28.

The hospital Friday said that the patients are still alive, but provided no more detail on their condition.

More: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Methodist-transfuses-blood-into-2-more-COVID-19-15178447.php

[sneakypete]

Let's hope it works.

I see no reason why it won't,and have a hard time understanding why it wasn't done before.

[LadyLiberty]

I with the Houston Chronicle would stop referring to it as a blood transfusion.  It's a plasma transfusion.

[TomSea]

I heard mentioned plasma transfusions in the news yesterday.

[sneakypete]

I with the Houston Chronicle would stop referring to it as a blood transfusion.  It's a plasma transfusion.

@LadyLiberty

I see it as an inoculation.

Inoculations have been created from the viruses themselves for over a century. People who have been sick with the virus and recovered obviously have something in their blood chemistry that makes them immune to the worse effects of the virus,so vaccinations are made from their blood.

BTW,this may not be technically right,but is right in essence. IIRC,the actual vaccine is an altered version of the original virus.

[Elderberry]

Convalescent plasma transfusion.

One of the ways to avoid complications associated with transfusion of plasma would be to use only purified antibodies derived from the serum of patients who have recovered from COVID 19.

[truth_seeker]

Let's hope it works.

I see no reason why it won't,and have a hard time understanding why it wasn't done before.

It has been used dating to 1918 Flu epidemic.

The "recovered patients' blood contains certain "antibodies."

[Fishrrman]

According to the article, this was done on Friday.
I would think that by Monday (tomorrow), they should be seeing something in the way of results...

[Elderberry]

Trials of Plasma From Recovered Covid-19 Patients Have Begun

By Newslanes April 4, 2020

https://newslanes.com/trials-of-plasma-from-recovered-covid-19-patients-have-begun/

At Houston Methodist Hospital, James Musser, the chair of Pathology and Genome Medicine, is a friend of Arturo Casadevall, the Johns Hopkins University immunologist who proposed using convalescent serum early in the pandemic. Musser pushed to get his hospital involved, putting out a call for donors—people who had confirmed positive tests for the virus and had gone at least 14 days without symptoms. His hospital is already doing compassionate-use transfusions. “So far, as of yesterday, we’ve transfused four patients,” Musser said on Thursday. He expected a fifth to receive plasma today.

And how’d it work? “The truth is, it’s far too early,” Musser says. “We, nationally, need to do controlled trials and understand, first and foremost, is this a safe therapeutic? There’s lots of reasons to think it will be, but you never know.”