Plasma therapy from recovered patients has shown promise as a treatment for critically ill Covid-19 victims, Chinese doctors have reported.
A project in Shanghai, involving ten patients, found that within three days of treatment symptoms "rapidly" improved.
The patients received one dose of plasma, derived from recently recovered donors and containing high levels of a SARS-Cov-2 antibody, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
After seven days, patients showed signs of reabsorbing lung lesions, according to chest CT scans, the researchers report.
They write: "The results, though preliminary, suggest that convalescent plasma therapy might be a safe and promising treatment for severe Covid-19 patients and support further investigation in randomised controlled clinical trials."
* A report issued by Science Translational Medicine says that a drug called EIDD-2801 has show promise in laboratory studies involving cultured human lung and airway cells.
The drug is similar to remdesivir but is an oral drug that could be administered "at home, early after diagnosis."
Researcher Timothy Sheahan, of the University of North Carolina, USA, called for early clinical trials. He said: “This has the potential to be as ubiquitous as Tamiflu in the future, as long as it proves to be safe and effective in people.”
Effectiveness of convalescent plasma therapy in severe COVID-19 patients. PNAS 6 April 2020
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/02/2004168117
An orally bioavailable broad-spectrum antiviral inhibits SARS-CoV-2 in human airway epithelia and multiple coronaviruses in mice. Science Translational Medicine 6 April 2020
https://stm.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/scitranslmed.abb5883
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