Why would this not be done for any patient diagnosed with covid that might be in a higher risk category?

doomer counterpoint

chris1515 said:

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Why would this not be done for any patient diagnosed with covid that might be in a higher risk category?

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There isn't a lot of plasma to go around I expect

chris1515 said:

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Why would this not be done for any patient diagnosed with covid that might be in a higher risk category?

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Limited supply.

AG 2000' said:

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chris1515 said:

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Why would this not be done for any patient diagnosed with covid that might be in a higher risk category?

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Limited supply.

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Very limited. We are back ordered by midnight usually. Our testing results usually come back around noon to 2pm each day and we have most units labeled, released and shipped by 3pm.

The pool of qualified donors is very limited and we have to wait for 28 days post symptoms before we can draw the donor. (FDA made a change to 14 days earlier this week, and we hope to have this finalized on our end by tomorrow, would cut the wait time in half)

Why do we not have natural history studies available as comparisons at this point?

In situations where you can't run blinded placebo trials, they are really useful.

I know I will be mocked for this...and I'm okay with that!

If we could get a large enough blood/plasma donation supply, is it at all possible to create an "artificial" convalescent plasma?

Aggie95 said:

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I know I will be mocked for this...and I'm okay with that!

If we could get a large enough blood/plasma donation supply, is it at all possible to create an "artificial" convalescent plasma?

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Kind of.

So we have two therapies from this.
1) immediate need transfusions of CVPLS to critically ill patients. This is priority #1 in regards for our communities.


2) in the near future. once we build an inventory and/or have plasma that isn't transfuse able but still has antibodies. We can separate the antibodies and pool them with other donations to create something similar to other intravenous immunoglobulin therapy. Or an injectable product that is basically concentrated antibodies.

That's actually what the antibody therapies are.

I've got a buddy at a different big pharma, and his team is pulling the best antibodies from recovered patients to turn them into a drug (and there are ten more companies trying the same thing). It's called "passive immunity" since you get the effect of an immune response without actually making your own antibodies.

The downside is that a real immune response (and thus a plasma transfusion) has a ton of different antibodies against the virus. To make it a drug you pick the one or two you hope are the best and then make those on huge scale. But the ones you pick may not be as good as getting the thousand different ones that nature picked.

Work on antibodies from recovered patients already well in progress

One thing regarding convalescent plasma I haven't heard brought up introduction of more clotting factors into patients already with elevated risk of throwing clots. Hopefully we can move to monoclonal therapy fast instead of just plasma.

amercer said:

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chris1515 said:

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Why would this not be done for any patient diagnosed with covid that might be in a higher risk category?

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There isn't a lot of plasma to go around I expect

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yet
a few more positive studies and the abundance of Covid survivors , thousands and thousands of doses could be available in short order

Sq 17 said:

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amercer said:

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chris1515 said:

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Why would this not be done for any patient diagnosed with covid that might be in a higher risk category?

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There isn't a lot of plasma to go around I expect

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yet
a few more positive studies and the abundance of Covid survivors , thousands and thousands of doses could be available in short order

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That is the hope. However, donors still have to meet all regular allogeneic donation criteria.

So, that eliminates a good portion due to travel and health history. All female donors have to be HLA tested if they have been previously pregnant to reduce risk of TRALI.

Statistically, we say that about 40% of the population is eligible to give blood, yet less than 5% do. Hopefully, covid19 survivors are more altruistic after recovery than the general population. (So far, it appears that the donors we see are all highly motivated to help, but it could be confirmation bias in effect as well.)

all good points on the possible snags, I really am optimistic that places like NYC where the infected and recivered rate is 12% + lots of plasma could be collected in short order.

We actually have a shipment coming tomorrow from the New York blood center. They have been collecting a lot and had a few extra units that we gladly took to supplement our supply. Will give us some breathing room for a day. Their blood center was the first nationally to collect cvpls and has been really ahead of the curve. We should be there in the next week or so, and be able to start building inventory to store for future use as our recovered population outweighs the critically ill.

i am thankful for the updates from a person who is in the thick of the crisis. Again A sincere thankyou and keep up the important work