Plasma Therapy shows little benefit for COVID-19 patients: Study

NEW DELHI: A clinical trial in Argentina released its data where it showed that using blood plasma of COVID-19 survivors for those who have severe pneumonia caused by novel coronavirus, has little benefit. The study, published in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that convalescent plasma delivers the plasma of survivors to infected persons but it did not show any significant improvement in the health of hospitalised patients. 

Convalescent plasma therapy is widely used in the United States of America (USA) to cure patients despite its limited efficacy and evidence of success. In October this year, an Indian study also found out that convalescent plasma just improves the symptoms in COVID-19 patients but has little impact on risk of death or increase in severity of the disease in 28 days. 

The study involved 333 hospitalised COVID-19 patients with severe pneumonia who were randomly picked for convalescent plasma therapy. After 30 days, researchers found out that there is no significant difference in patient’s health or symptoms. Mortality Rate was also almost same at 11 per cent in convalescent plasma group and 11.4 per cent in the placebo group.