Early Convalescent Plasma May Lower Risk of Severe COVID in Seniors

A study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients with high antibody concentrations seemed to delay or halt disease progression in mildly ill older adults infected with the novel coronavirus, reports CIDRAP News . The investigators infused convalescent plasma in 160 older adults within 72 hours of COVID symptom onset from June 4 to Oct. 25, 2020, of whom half received the treatment. Subjects were either 75 years and older with or without underlying illnesses, or 65 to 74 years with at least one underlying condition. Of the 80 subjects in the intention-to-treat cohort given convalescent plasma, 13 developed severe COVID-19, compared with 25 of 80 administered a placebo. Two people in the convalescent plasma group and four in the placebo group died. A larger effect was indicated in an intention-to-treat analysis, with nine of 76 patients who got convalescent plasma and 23 of 78 who received placebo becoming severely ill. Those in the convalescent plasma cohort also took longer to develop serious respiratory illness versus the placebo group. Although the authors acknowledged that the study was not statistically engineered to measure long-term outcomes, subjects who received convalescent plasma apparently did better than those who received a placebo in terms of developing life-threatening respiratory disease, critical systemic illness, and death.