Most COVID-19 patients treated with blood plasma from recovered coronavirus patients show improvement, a new small study shows.
Conducted at Houston Methodist Hospital, the study includes 25 severely ill COVID-19 patients who were given blood plasma from recovered patients, known as convalescent plasma. The study period was from March 28 to April 14, and the study was published in The American Journal of Pathology.
Researchers found that 19 out of 25 patients (76 percent) showed improvement by the end of the study period, and 11 of the patients were discharged from the hospital.
They did not observe any adverse events as a result of plasma transfusion.
Researchers are considering conducting a randomized controlled trial at Houston Methodist to examine other variables of the treatment, such as timing of the transfusion.