Covid-19: Plasma therapy can be dangerous, believes expert

"In theory, the antibodies of the recovered person may help that patient’s immune system fight the virus. While showing great promise, it is a line of treatment that is yet to be validated for efficacy and safety and cannot be deployed widely without caution," Dr Naresh Purohit, Epidemiologist and Visiting Professor at the Kolkata based West Bengal University of Health Sciences,School of Public Health, told UNl here.

The coronavirus pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges to governments, health professionals and the general public at large, around the world.

Every response, administrative, social, economic or medical is being subjected to intense public scrutiny, as it rightly should be in the spirit of mature democracy.
The current therapy being used for Covid patients in umpteen hospitals in the country involves infusing patients suffering from COVID-19 with plasma from recovered patients.

'The current plasma therapy is being experimented and there is no evidence that this could be used as a treatment,' the National Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme Advisor stated, adding even these times of collective uncertainty are no reason to lower the scientific temper.

'Science should be driven by reason and evidence with hope as a catalyst but not by either fear or populism. Pushing one or the other therapy without evidence or caution can only set back our larger fight against COVID-19,' the physician warned.

Dr Purohit observed that there are only three published case series for convalescent plasma in COVID-19 with a cumulative of 19 patients.

"Given the very small number of patients involved in these studies and a publication bias in medicine, researchers cannot conclude the therapy will work on all patients all the time or even believe that the convalescent plasma was the only reason for their improvement," he said.

"Convalescent plasma therapy requires intensive resources, healthy COVID-19 survivors to donate, a blood bank with proper machinery and trained personnel to remove plasma, equipment to store it and testing facilities to make sure it has an adequate amount of antibodies. Too much focus on one approach can take away the focus from other important therapeutic modalities like use of oxygen therapy, antivirals and antibiotics for complicated hospital courses. To overcome the pandemic comprehensively, we should focus on strengthening health systems at all levels, including referral systems, supply chain, logistics and inventory management. We need to work on protecting our healthcare workers, improving prevention methods, promoting cough etiquettes, effective quarantining and accurate testing," the doctor said.

According to the Union Heath Ministry's recent circular plasma therapy is still in experimental stage and till it is approved no one should use it for the treatment of coronavirus patients. It can be harmful to the patient and is illegal, he cautioned.

'The most important principle in medical ethics is do no harm.

The transfusion of convalescent plasma is also not without risks, which range from mild reactions like fever, itching, to life-threatening allergic reactions and lung injury. To recommend a therapy without studying it thoroughly with robust scientific methods may cause more harm than good,' the physician observed.