Giving convalescent plasma to COVID-19 patients at high risk of developing severe disease within a week of their symptoms beginning didn't prevent the disease from progressing in a federally funded study of patients in U.S. emergency departments.
The study, published Aug. 18 in The New England Journal of Medicine, was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, an HHS office that develops responses to health security threats. It included 511 patients with a median age of 54.
"We were hoping that the use of COVID-19 convalescent plasma would achieve at least a 10% reduction in disease progression in this group, but instead the reduction we observed was less than 2%," Clifton Callaway, MD, principal investigator for the study and professor of emergency medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, said in a news release.
The clinical trial was halted in February after an independent board concluded convalescent plasma was unlikely to help high-risk patients in emergency rooms.
Find the full study results here.