Two hospitals in São Paulo receive authorization to use plasma from recovered patients in severe cases.
Blood from patients recovered from COVID-19 may help in the treatment of severe cases. The National Research Ethics Commission (Conep) has authorized the start of clinical trials with plasma from patients in São Paulo. The experiment was also conducted in China and will be initiated in France.
247 - A report by journalists Glauco Araújo, Rodrigo Rodrigues, Renata Ribeiro, and Roberta Giacomoni informs that the Albert Einstein and Sírio-Libanês hospitals have received authorization from the National Research Ethics Commission (Conep) to begin clinical trials using plasma from patients who have recovered from the coronavirus on critically ill patients.
Plasma is the liquid part of the blood. The use of this substance, taken from recovered patients, has already been successfully implemented in outbreaks of other respiratory infections, including the H1N1 influenza pandemic that occurred between 2009 and 2010.
There is still no conclusive scientific evidence on the effectiveness of the treatment, says the National Health Surveillance Agency (Anvisa).
In China, five critically ill patients diagnosed with COVID-19 showed improvement after treatment with plasma from people who had contracted and recovered from the virus, according to reports. G1.
With more than 7.500 deaths from the coronavirus, France will begin testing blood plasma transfusions from recovered individuals to critically ill patients.