{"id":29647,"date":"2020-03-31T09:35:21","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T14:35:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tmc.edu\/news\/?p=29647"},"modified":"2020-04-01T11:06:23","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T16:06:23","slug":"houston-methodist-performs-the-nations-first-plasma-transfusion-to-treat-covid-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tmc.edu\/news\/2020\/03\/houston-methodist-performs-the-nations-first-plasma-transfusion-to-treat-covid-19\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston Methodist performs the nation\u2019s first plasma transfusion to treat COVID-19"},"content":{"rendered":"
Blood plasma transfusion was used to treat COVID-19 for the first time in the United States by physician-scientists at Houston Methodist Hospital <\/a>this past weekend.<\/p>\n The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)<\/a> fast-tracked an old treatment that doctors hope will fight this new coronavirus successfully enough to flatten the curve sooner than expected to curb mounting fatalities.<\/p>\n :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: After FDA clearance on March 28, 2020, Houston Methodist became the first academic medical center in the country to transfuse donated blood plasma from a fully recovered COVID-19 patient into a critically ill person\u2014a treatment known as convalescent serum therapy. The historic acts occurred when researchers drew a quart of blood plasma from a COVID-19 survivor and transfused two people infected with the virus.<\/p>\n \u201cConvalescent serum therapy could be a vital treatment route, because, unfortunately, there is relatively little to offer many patients except supportive care\u2014and the ongoing clinical trials are going to take a while. We don\u2019t have that much time,\u201d Eric Salazar, M.D., Ph.D.<\/a>, principal investigator and a physician scientist in the pathology and genomic medicine department at Houston Methodist Research Institute, said in a statement.<\/p>\n The clear, straw-colored component of blood is called \u201cthe gift of life\u201d for a reason. In addition to glucose, clotting factors and electrolytes, plasma is rich in antibodies that are produced by the immune system to seek and destroy foreign substances in the body, such as bacteria and viruses.<\/p>\n Convalescent serum therapy is more than a century old. Doctors used an early version of this therapy to treat patients during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the diphtheria epidemic in the U.S. in the 1920s, a flesh-eating bacteria outbreak in the 1930s and the Ebola outbreak in 2014.<\/p>\n \u201cThere haven\u2019t been \u2026 the best controlled trials, but there\u2019s a rich medical history of this,\u201d said James Musser M.D., Ph.D.<\/a>, pathology and genomic medicine chair at Houston Methodist Research Institute and Houston Methodist Hospital. \u201cWhat hasn\u2019t been done\u2014and is important to do at this juncture as fast as we can\u2014is to do a real trial and figure out if this is going to be beneficial at all. If so, is it beneficial a little, a lot or a whole lot?\u201d<\/p>\n
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