While many of us are doing our part during this pandemic by staying at home, doctors and other healthcare workers are working tirelessly to take care of the COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals
While many of us are doing our part during this pandemic by staying at home, doctors and other healthcare workers are working tirelessly to take care of the COVID-19 patients admitted to hospitals.
Since this novel coronavirus does not have a definite cure yet, doctors have been trying every possible treatment that can help in relieving the symptoms of COVID-19.
Other than repurposing drugs already available in the market, such as hydroxychloroquine and remdesivir, doctors have also been using plasma therapy to treat patients with severe symptoms and complications of COVID-19.
When a virus or any microorganism enters the body, the immune system gets activated and makes antibodies against it. These antibodies fight the microorganism and the resulting infection and can stay in the blood for months or even years.
Plasma therapy, also known as convalescent plasma treatment, is a treatment where doctors separate antibody-rich serum from the blood donated by a recovered COVID-19 patient and then transfuse it to the body of a severely infected patient.
Though the efficiency of using convalescent plasma against COVID-19 is still being researched, scientists have found that COVID-19 antibodies may vanish rapidly in the donated blood.
Antibodies in the body of recovered COVID-19 patients
For the study conducted by the scientists of the Héma-Quebec blood centre, Canada, the scientists took plasma samples of 282 COVID-19 patients, however, only 15 of them were considered in the study. Of these 15 patients, 11 were males and 4 were females. None of the patients were admitted to the hospital but they presented with mild to severe symptoms.
The study was published in the journal Blood on 2nd October 2020.
All 15 participants donated their plasma between four and nine times. The first donation of the plasma was done between 33 and 77 days after the first symptoms were experienced. The last donation of plasma was done between 66 and 114 days after the first symptoms were experienced.
Results of the study
As per Dr Renée Bazin, the author, this is the first longitudinal study (study where the data is collected multiple times) that showed people who once had antibodies in their blood (seropositive) can present with no antibodies (seronegative) after a certain period.
The results of the study showed that all 15 donors had a high number of antibodies in the beginning but started showing a decrease at around 88 days and within the next 21 days, the antibodies reduced to half.
Dr Bazin further added that out of the 282 donors examined at the beginning of the study, around seven percent did not have detectable antibodies even at the time of their first donation. Furthermore, this proportion of people doubled when the donors waited for more than 11 to 12 weeks, since they first experienced COVID-19 symptoms, before donating the plasma.
Conclusion
The scientists concluded that since the antibodies in the donated plasma wane off within 2 to 4 months, the plasma donors must not wait for too long and donate their plasma as soon as they become eligible.
A person recovered from COVID-19 disease can donate plasma around 30 to 40 days after they first tested positive, as it is believed that they would have formed enough antibodies in their blood by that time.
For more information, read our article on Convalescent plasma therapy (passive antibody treatment).
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