While the U. S. Food and Drug Administration has not been able to do so. But it’s not the first time It has legalized the emergency use of convalescence plasma treatment to treat patients with Covid-19, new findings from a randomized controlled trial conducted through the Indian government have shown that plasma treatment does not reduce mortality rates and does not prevent progression. Disease Disease. Results, which have not yet been peer reviewed, were posted online this week on Medrxiv’s prepress server.
“We expected more promising effects with this therapy. If it had shown favorable effects, it would have been a wonderful addition to the remedies,” said Dr. Varsha Godbole, professor and head of the Department of Medicine at GMERS Medical College in Vadodara, Gujarat, western India, which was one of the centers at trial. India now has a total of 4. 46 million cases, the highest moment in the world after the United States, and has recorded 75,062 Covid-19-like deaths.
Plasma treatment involves extracting blood plasma from patients who have recovered from Covid-19 and injecting it into patients with severe cases of the virus with the justification that transfusion can cause an immune reaction in receptors to fight infection and prevent its progression.
A total of 464 patients with Covid-19 “moderately ill” were included in the trial at 39 hospitals in India. Of these, 235 patients won plasma therapy, two doses of two hundred milliliters of plasma transfused 24 hours apart, in addition to popular treatment. The organization of 229 patients won only the popular care.
At the end of the trial, 34 patients in the convalescent plasma treatment organization had died compared with 31 deaths in the arm, which was not a statistically significant difference. Meanwhile, 17 patients from either team progressed to severe illness, apparently the treatment did not help reduce the infection. No primary adverse events were reported.
“Convalescence plasma has been linked to relief in mortality or progression to a severe Covid-19,” concluded the study, conducted through the Indian Medical Research Council.
Even before the effects of the trial, the treatment had gained immense popularity in India. Following the publication of the effects of the trial, some physicians stated that they would continue to use the treatment after careful patient selection. Om Srivastava, an infectious disease specialist based in Mumbai who led the trial at one of the centers, said a general conclusion that plasma treatment is not premature.
The trial, he said, focused only on “moderately ill patients” and was not conducted with patients at the initial level of viral infection. “I think plasma healing works very well at the initial levels, in the first five to seven days. choose your patients correctly, there is an advantage,” Dr. Srivastava said, adding that additional investigation of comorability is needed among patients who won the remedy and how this would possibly have affected the outcome.
But Dr. Abdul S. Ansari, director of extensive care facilities at Nanavati Super Specialty Hospital in Mumbai, said he would not use treatment for patients with ill Covid-19. “For me, one of the messages to don’t forget from the trial is to avoid plasma treatment for ill patients. I will only use it in in moderation ill patients after careful biochemical evaluations.
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I am a New York-based science and fitness journalist and graduated from Columbia School of Journalism with a master’s degree in science and fitness reports.
I am a New York based science and fitness journalist and a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism with a master’s degree in science and fitness reporting. I write on infectious diseases, global fitness, gene editing tools, the intersection of public fitness and. Previously, I worked as a fitness journalist in Mumbai, India, for the Hindustan Times, a newspaper in which I reported extensively on drug-resistant infections. such as tuberculosis, leprosy and HIV. Latest medical inventions and public fitness policies.
I have a master’s degree in biochemistry and a bachelor’s degree in zoology. My delight in running in a molecular and cellular biology lab helped me see the science of the researcher’s eye. In 2018, I won the EurekAlert! Scholarships for foreign science journalists. My Twitter account ? aayushipratap