Luis Enjuanes: “When the pandemic ends, let's not forget to continue with all the research that has been launched”
1 April 2020
The Clinical Hospital of Zaragoza, among the first ten Spanish hospitals that will participate in the WHO trial on the coronavirus
2 April 2020
Johns Hopkins University will begin transfusions to patients in the US in two weeks
Therapy with plasma from recovered coronavirus patients is the "only" option currently available to confront the pandemic while a vaccine or drug is developed. This has been stated by Arturo Casadevall, an immunologist at Johns Hopkins University in the USA.
"It is the only thing we have at this moment that has a good chance of working," Casadevall, president of the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology of that teaching center, said in a telephone interview.
The public health expert has highlighted that plasma is the option that is "immediately available", although he clarifies that in the coming weeks there may be other alternatives. In this sense, he has pointed out that plasma, the part of the blood that contains antibodies but not red blood cells, also works in conjunction with medications. "It's not one or the other," he specified. Casadevall emphasizes that convalescent serum therapy, as the use of plasma is known, can be administered to a patient who is also medicated and "often obtains better results when used together."
The Johns Hopkins project
The Johns Hopkins professor, who has been promoting the use of this therapy since the beginning of the year, has celebrated the recent authorization from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And he has highlighted as an "important precedent" the first plasma transfusion from a patient recovered from Covid-19 to another in critical condition, carried out on March 28 at the Methodist Hospital in Houston (Texas).
Led by Casadevall, Johns Hopkins University is also working around the clock on this century-old procedure, which dates back to the so-called "Spanish flu" pandemic that began in 1918 and killed millions of people.
The idea is to use the blood plasma of patients who have recovered so that their antibodies help cure or prevent this contagious respiratory disease.
