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WHO warns that treating COVID-19 with plasma is still an experimental treatment

pharmafile | August 25, 2020 | News story | Manufacturing and Production  

The World Health Organization has warned that the use of blood plasma from coronavirus patients to treat COVID-19 is still in its experimental phase.

This comes after the FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for convalescent plasma to treat patients with COVID-19, which followed 70,000 patients in the US already receiving the treatment.

Dr Soumya Swaminathan, WHO’s Chief Scientist, said: “The results are not conclusive. At the moment, it’s still very low-quality evidence. Of course, countries can do an emergency listing if they feel the benefits outweigh the risks. But that’s usually done when you’re waiting for the more definitive evidence.”

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The FDA issued the EUA due to a recent study published on medRxiv, but this was not peer-reviewed, nor did the study use a randomised and controlled placebo trial. The FDA did also warn that the plasma treatment should not be considered as a new standard of care.

The use of plasma in treating viruses, flus and diseases has been ongoing over the last century and plasma was used to fight the most recent Ebola outbreaks in Central and West Africa.

Antibodies float in plasma, which are created to fight infections. It is hoped that taking the antibodies in plasma from people who have survived or are fighting off coronavirus will help other patients.

Martin Landray of Oxford University said the treatment offers “huge promise” but feels there is no real proof it works, adding: “There is a huge gap between theory and proven benefit.”

Conor Kavanagh

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