THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state will revise its approach of administering convalescent plasma on a compassionate basis for Covid-19 patients who are moderately/severely ill.
The turnaround follows the direction from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) that convalescent plasma therapy (CPT) should only be carried out on patients in the early stage of Covid-19 -- within three to seven days from the onset of symptoms, but not later than 10 days.
The ICMR directive is said to be based on its finding that CPT didn’t help in reducing deaths due to Covid-19.
“For the state, experimentation with CPT has been a success. It helped many critically ill Covid-19 patients to recover and, for some, from death also. But in the light of the ICMR direction on Wednesday, certain fine-tuning will be made,” said a member of the Covid-19 state medical board.
The ICMR had earlier taken the stand that CPT did not lead to a reduction in progression to severe Covid-19 or all-cause mortality in the group that received convalescent plasma as compared to the group that didn’t receive it.
The stand was based on a multi-centre randomised controlled trial within the country carried out across 39 public and private hospitals.
As per the latest guideline on the use of CPT, ICMR mandates that its indiscriminate use is not advisable and should get restricted to management of Covid-19 when specific criteria are met.
“Patients being in the early stage of Covid-19 -- within three to seven days from onset of symptoms but not later than 10 days -- is one of the criteria for CPT. Besides, ICMR stipulates that a potential donor for convalescent plasma should have sufficient concentration of antibodies working against Covid-19. In the case of the recipient, no antibody against Covid-19 should be present as it makes transfusing convalescent plasma a futile intervention,” added the member.
‘Testing negative not necessary’
At the same time, ICMR stipulates that though men and women could donate plasma, the latter should be one who has never been pregnant.
It also stated that testing negative for Covid-19 is not necessary for donating plasma.
According to it, after 14 days of symptom resolution, one who is above 50kg body weight is eligible for donation.
Under convalescent plasma treatment, antibodies from the blood of those who fought off SARS-CoV-2 will get isolated and these will be injected into a patient who is infected.
It is expected that the antibodies will start stimulating the sick patient’s immune system to better fight the disease.
The state in its treatment guidelines in August stated that convalescent plasma is for off-label use and has been using the same since June. For promoting the same, plasma banks are being set up across the state.