Background: The COVID-19 virus, in terms of pathogenesis and disease spectrum, resembles its predecessor viral strains which caused outbreaks of SARS and MERs. Due to unavailability of approved treatment protocols, healthcare workers initiated treatment of COVID-19 patients with convalescent plasma therapy. Objective: To appraise similarities between the three Coronaviruses and deduce the effectiveness of CP therapy based on exploration of its efficacy in the SARS and MERS outbreaks. Analysis: A narrative review of case reports, randomised controlled trials and meta-analysis studies, on use of CP therapy in SARs and MERS, was conducted. Studies evaluated for the purpose of this review were added through search engines of PubMed Central and Google Scholar. Results: We concluded that CP therapy had been able to play pivotal roles in treating critically-ill SARS and MERS patients. The risks of unintended immunological responses among other factors, hindering CP Therapy’s approval from drug administration authorities, were weighed against favourable chanisms, such as hypercoagulability, that support its use in COVID-19 patients. Conclusion: Findings collected from these studies steered our path to theorize the possibility of reducing mortality with convalescent plasma therapy and support our rallying efforts for enlisting this in the official treatment protocol of COVID-19. Doi: 10.28991/SciMedJ-2020-0204-6 Full Text: PDF
UNSTRUCTURED
It has been proved that the current COVID-19 pandemic can be loosely bound to its predecessor outbreaks i.e. SARS and MERS. No vaccine or approved treatment is available for either coronavirus. At present, COVID-19 has infected 2,436,743 people in over 200 countries with unprecedented transmission rate. Healthcare workers in China initiated treatment of clinically worsening COVID-19 patients with a traditional method of passive immunity i.e. transfusion of plasma recovered from COVID-19 recuperated patients. According to available medical data, this technique is routinely favored by the World Health Organization (WHO) and has been in use since 1890 for combatting newly emerging infectious diseases, most commonly of a viral origin. Exploration of studies carried out on Convalescent Plasma and its effectiveness in the past steered our path to theorize the possibility of reducing mortality with convalescent plasma therapy and put together reviewed evidence to support our rallying efforts for enlisting this in the official treatment protocol of COVID-19.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.