US Hospitals Join Convalescent Plasma Study To Treat Coronavirus

Hundreds of U.S. hospitals are beginning to collect plasma from their patients who have recovered from the coronavirus strain COVID-19 as researchers search for a treatment for the deadly virus.
Though no effective treatment or vaccine for COVID-19 is available, use of a therapy that might be able to help patients recover is widening from early test sites in places like the Mayo Clinic, which is leading the current study of convalescent plasma, and major academic medical centers to community hospitals and clinics. Mayo is coordinating the effort supported by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration at more than 1,600 sites across the country.
On Friday, HCA Healthcare, the nation’s largest investor-owned hospital chain, said 172 of its affiliated hospitals are “participating in a national study to test whether plasma from convalescent, or recovered, COVID-19 patients may help in the treatment of individuals currently sick from the virus.” These hospitals are seeking “qualified plasma donors in 20 states,” the company said.
The massive effort is significant because there can be plasma shortages and cases of COVID-19 continue to surge across the U.S.
“We’re encouraging the communities HCA Healthcare serves to join us in this important effort to help identify donors,” HCA Healthcare chief medical officer Dr. Jonathan Perlin said.
Researchers say the convalescent serum derived from the plasma of people who have recovered from COVID-19 can be a potentially rich source of antibodies, which are proteins made by the immune system to attack the virus.
Researchers say convalescent plasma has been shown to help prevent as well as treat infections in those exposed to the same virus as the donor for more than a century. The part of the blood that contains antibodies, so-called convalescent plasma, has been used for decades to treat infectious diseases, including Ebola as recently as 2014. The therapy has also been used during outbreaks of other viruses like SARS-1 and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), those involved say.
“The convalescent plasma study is focused on treating patients currently facing severe cases of COVID-19, by arming their immune systems with plasma that is rich in virus-fighting antibodies from individuals who have recently recovered,” Dr. Howard “Skip” Burris III, president of clinical operations and chief medical officer at Sarah Cannon Research Institute, which is supporting the HCA’s participation.
UnitedHealth Group, which owns the health insurance company UnitedHealthcare and the large medical care provider Optum, donated $5 million earlier this week to the effort to expand availability of “investigational convalescent plasma treatments for COVID-19 patients nationwide.”
Mayo Clinic is coordinating efforts across more than 1,600 sites in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to collect blood plasma from recovered COVID-19 donors who meet several criteria established by the FDA.
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