US halts plasma transfusion trials for COVID patients

U.S. health experts said on Tuesday they were halting clinical trials of convalescent blood plasma in patients with mild to moderate COVID symptoms after preliminary results showed no benefit from treatment.

The trial, which began in August, involved just over 500 people who went to the emergency room but did not need to be hospitalized.

The people chosen for the study also had risk factors such as obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes or heart problems.

Some of them received the treatment – blood plasma from people who had COVID and got over it – and others were given a placebo.

Doctors examined how many of them needed additional care or outright hospitalization, or who died, within 15 days of treatment.

An independent panel of experts determined that while the convalescent plasma intervention was not causing any harm, it was unlikely to benefit patients, the National Institutes of Health said.

Convalescent plasma is the liquid part of the blood of a recovering COVID patient. It contains antibodies produced by the body after being infected.

At the end of October, a study carried out in India and published in the medical journal BMJ said the treatment offered limited effectiveness.

It did not reduce mortality or prevent people with moderate symptoms of COVID from developing a severe case.

More than 100,000 people have received treatment in the United States since the start of the pandemic and many more around the world, the NIH said.

At the end of August, at the persistent request of then-President Donald Trump, the United States Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for blood plasma transfusions from recovered COVID patients to people hospitalized with the disease. .

Then-FDA chief Stephen Hahn admitted a mistake during a press conference with Trump, saying he cited numbers overestimating the treatment’s benefits.

The FDA recently limited its emergency clearance to the use of plasma only with a high concentration of antibodies and for patients hospitalized with early stages of COVID or with limited ability to produce antibodies.

© 2021 AFP