ICMR study finds convalescent plasma therapy not a cure for coronavirus

by RM NAIR

NEW DELHI, Sept 9: In the absence of a medicine for coronavirus since it is a new disease, doctors have been repurposing existing medicines symptomatically for which they have the dicretionary powers, but how come politicians the world over making public announcements reeling out brand names from pharmacopoeia as each one's discovery for corona cure. This was definitely a collusion to share the billions the pharma sharks could mint. And they are doing. Else why couldn't you use at least one of those medicines and save lakhs of lives? We are into the eighth month! And still groping in the dark!

The reality: Unlike the food pipe and the digestive system that delivers nutrients to the body, the respiratory track and the lungs delivering oxygen to the system are difficult to access and deal with in case of infections like tuberculosis, coronavirus, etc. So much so, these ailments become life-threatening.

As for coronavirus devastating the world for the last eight months, an alternative therapy called convalescent plasma therapy was mooted four months ago as the Chinese found it effective, but has not so far been conclusively confirmed so in trials on patients anywhere else in the world. In this therapy, convalescent plasma collected by apheresis technology is transfused into the patients to create immunity.

In India, various hospitals started administering the alternative at the instance of the Union Health Ministry. It was at this point that the ICMR initiated trials in collaboration with various hospitals to confirm the status of the new therapy. In fact, it was not a new therapy. This had cropped up during the Spanish flu of 1918-20 but till today there has not a final word about it.

And now, after intensive trials and study, the ICMR has made the announcement: Convalescent plasma therapy will not do any good in coronavirus patients. In the therapy, plasma containing antibodies is drawn from the blood of the patient who has recovered from coronavirus and transfused into a patient to develop appropriate immunity to fight the infection.

The ICMR said, "The ‘open-label parallel-arm phase II multicentre randomized controlled trial’ (PLACID Trial) was conducted across 39 public and private hospitals across India between April 22 and July 14 to find the effectiveness of convalescent plasma (CP) for the treatment of COVID-19."

It found that the CP therapy does not help in reducing mortality or progression of the infection to a severe stage. The study covered 464 moderately ill coronavirus infected hospitalised patients.

The Union Health Ministry had on June 27 allowed the hospitals in the country the use of the unconfirmed convalescent plasma for treating coronavirus patients leading to massive irregularities.

“The CP was not associated with a reduction in mortality or progression to severe COVID-19,” the ICMR study said.