A new study shows that an experimental procedure that uses convalescent plasma—essentially blood from recovered patients—to treat COVID-19 is safe.
Researchers from Mayo Clinic, Michigan State University, and Johns Hopkins University, tracked 5,000 patients who received convalescent plasma transfusions and found few side effects and low mortality in those receiving the experimental treatment.
The study, a pre-print version not yet peer-reviewed, was posted Thursday on a health sciences server called Medrxiv (pdf). Pre-print studies report new medical developments that are not yet approved to be used to guide medical practice.
The researchers measured the impact of convalescent plasma transfusions on hospitalized adults with severe or life-threatening COVID-19 in the first four hours after receiving the experimental treatment, and then seven days on.
They found that what are known as serious adverse events (SAE) occurred in fewer than 1 percent of the treated patients after seven days, while the mortality rate was 14.9 percent, leading them to conclude the treatment is safe.
“Given the deadly nature of COVID-19 and the large population of critically-ill patients included in these analyses, the mortality rate does not appear excessive,” the researchers wrote in the study abstract.
“These early indicators suggest that transfusion of convalescent plasma is safe in hospitalized patients with COVID-19,” they added.
“The seven-day mortality rate was 14.9% reported here is not alarming, particularly because some of these plasma transfusions may be characterized as attempts at rescue or salvage therapy in patients admitted to the ICU with multi-organ failure, sepsis and significant comorbidities,” the researchers noted