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United Kingdom Medicine

UK To Trial Coronavirus Treatments Using Blood From Survivors (theguardian.com) 64

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Health officials have prioritised two clinical trials that will be supplied with blood from recovered Covid-19 patients in the hope that transfusions can help save the lives of people hospitalised with the infection. From a report: NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) has started to collect blood from recovered patients with a view to using the antibody-rich serum to boost the immune systems of patients struggling to overcome the virus. The limited supply of convalescent plasma will be given to patients enrolled on sub-studies in the Recovery trial led by Peter Horby at the University of Oxford, and the Remap-Cap trial led by the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC) in London. The Recovery trial will assess whether the plasma helps patients to recover before they are admitted to intensive care, while the Remap-Cap trial will investigate whether similar transfusions help to save patients who are already in high-dependency or intensive care units. At least one trial that was designed to assess whether the plasma could protect healthy people who are in close contact with Covid-19 patients, such as NHS staff and family members, was rejected by NHSBT amid a shortage of the donated serum.
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UK To Trial Coronavirus Treatments Using Blood From Survivors More

UK To Trial Coronavirus Treatments Using Blood From Survivors

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  • Does this teach the recipient's immune system any new tricks, or just flag the virus currently in the system for a one-time attack?

    • It could do either. or neither. Don't think they know, just a shot in the dark that /might/ work people have volunteered to participate in.

      • I wonder when they will start using leeches (not the politician types) to try and cure this disease.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Likely never outside backwater third world nations that don't accept Western medicine yet.

          But when it comes to novel virus causing global pandemic, normal "let's take a couple of years to research and develop countermeasures" approach is not acceptable. Threshold for risk taking is much lower, and so we'll get much more direct and much more risky attempts to address this threat.

          This is one of many such attempts currently ongoing.

        • Leeches could be effective as they inject an anti-clotting agent, and anti clotting agents are being thought of as an effective treatment. Not to state the obvious but please don't take medical advice from an engineer on Slashdot just because he has seen the word anti-clotting being used in articles about leeches and articles about Covid-19.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      Ever hear of snake bit antivenom? This works the same way. You don't transfer immunological memory from the source, you transfer antibodies which flag the offending antigen for the patient's immune system.

      That gives the patient's immune system a head start on responding. Think of it as being like your buddy slipping you a piece of papers with answers for the final exam on it. That doesn't preclude you from learning the material on the test, but it could help if you're behind on the reading.

  • It saved Kirk after all

  • I mean, that is our new reality, right? Magical, last minute cures by using the blood of our protagonist?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by hey! ( 33014 )

      What we could sure use at this point is something that falls far short of a miracle cure. A treatment which reduces the severity of the illness would keep people off ventilators and out of the hospital.

      A treatment that decreases the duration of the infection could put a huge dent in the number of active cases and speed us along to herd immunity.

      We probably aren't going to be able to escape difficult times ahead. But *marginal* scientific advances can have a big impact on how long and how bad those times w

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      There is validity to it... survivors of an illness develop antibodies, and so by collecting plasma from survivors, these antibodies can be put into other people (of suitable compatibility, of course) who may be able to then fight off the disease in question more quickly than they otherwise would.

      Essentially, the process acts like giving the immune system a bit of a push in the right direction. Depending on the rate of progression of the disease in the recipient at the time they receive the antibodies,

  • Similar plasma blood drive request in US (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lonng_Time_Lurker ( 6285236 ) on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @12:11PM (#59976610)

    There's a similar plasma blood drive request in US. So I tried to sign up. Of course, I only know I have had it from proximity proxy to a nurse who had it and was tested.

    So they asked (with Microsoft's simple chatbot) - if I had been tested positive. I said no, and the app informed me to "go to my doctor, get a test, and come back".

    Well - this is the US. I'm certainly not going to go pay to go to my doctor, pay for the test, just so I can donate plasma. If you want plasma donors, enable the plasma donors to donate.

    • Your experience is hardly different than most doctor appointments I've been to. They keep typing while you're talking and only half listening and then spend 10 seconds looking at whatever problem you have. Then they write a prescription to appease you and then run out of the room. I imagine their systems look like Idiocracy with emojis for ailments. Finding a thorough competent doctor is difficult.

    • Well - this is the US. I'm certainly not going to go pay to go to my doctor, pay for the test

      At least in my area, tests are free and don't require a doctor visit. You just call the hotline, tell them why you think you need to be tested, and if they agree you get scheduled for a test at a drive-through testing center, at no charge. Of course, this is testing for active cases, not antibodies, so if you had it but are no longer sick, you'll test negative. I don't know that you can get an antibody test right now, regardless of whether you're willing to pay for it.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • But can't there still be HIV and other STDs in the blood that are below the threshold for detection, yet still can infect the recipient?

      Obviously thats true, but just like "wearing a mask is worse than not wearing one", they have a motive that, in their mind, justifies lying to you.

    • Simple solution: Don't take a transfusion unless you would die with out it. Winning the lottery of living with contracted undetectable HIV is better than having died from not gotten the transfusion.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      My understanding is that if HIV viral load (particles?) is so low that we cannot detect it, it's vastly below threshold needed to actually infect. It's also my understanding that HIV screening is routine in Western countries on donated blood.

      Viral infections require a fairly significant viral payload to overwhelm initial defence mechanisms and have a reasonable chance to encounter correct cells, infect them and being the reproduction cycle.

      I could be wrong in relation to HIV, since it behaves in some very e

  • In Poland first patient was given blood plasma (Score:3)

    by cyba ( 25058 ) on Wednesday April 22, 2020 @12:30PM (#59976660) Homepage

    This week first patient in Poland was given blood plasma produced from COVID convalescents' blood.
    Several hours after injection his fewer has dropped, but it's too early to say if this therapy actually works.

  • I wonder how that reates to "transfer factor". It was mentioned by a leading immunologist here, Czech Rep, some time (weeks) ago as a great, very effective, but not yet approved cure.

  • Blood that comes from people who had Coronavirus has to have the viruses in it killed. This is done by adding methylene blue and exposing the blood to high intensity light.

    "Inactivation of three emerging viruses – severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus, Crimean–Congo haemorrhagic fever virus and Nipah virus – in platelet concentrates by ultraviolet C light and in plasma by methylene blue plus visible light"

    https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co... [wiley.com]

    There are literally decades of research wit

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by PPH ( 736903 )

      The methylene blue I can handle. But if you are telling me that I have to leave my mother's basement and actually expose myself to sunlight.....

      .... well, let Covid-19 take me.

  • Has anyone looked into why vampires seem unaffected by COVID-19? May be something there .. just saying.

    • What scientific literature I've seen on the subject suggests that COVID-19 can only affect vampires under two circumstances:

      1) Live virus present on a wooden stake that's being driven through the vampire's heart

      2) If an infected person happens to cough in the immediate vicinity of a vampire at the moment the vampire is exposed to direct sunlight.

  • This is one step up from blood magic practiced by some traditional peoples.

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