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Early findings from researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) show that convalescent plasma appears to be a safe and possibly effective treatment for children with life-threatening COVID-19 cases. The results were published online Friday by the magazine. Pediatric blood and cancer.
To date, no therapy has been shown to be safe and effective for children who develop life-threatening complications from contracting the SARS-COV-2 virus.
One possible treatment that has been explored in adults is the use of convalescent plasma, which is derived from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 and can be administered to currently ill patients to generate an antibody response that renders the virus inert.
Early positive results were seen in adults who received convalescent plasma, but the treatment had not been studied in children.
Some children who contract this virus can develop very serious complications, so even with limited data in adults, we thought it was worth exploring the use of convalescent plasma as a possible treatment option.. “
David Teachey, MD, Principal Physician and Study Assistant, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Teachey is also Co-Leader of the Frontier Immune Dysregulation Program and Director of Clinical Research at CHOP’s Center for Childhood Cancer Research.
This study is the first report of convalescent plasma in children with life-threatening COVID-19 and involved researchers in a wide variety of disciplines, including immune dysregulation, transfusion medicine, infectious diseases, occupational health, critical care, hematology, oncology, immunology. , and rheumatology.
Four patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome participated in the study. The researchers measured donor antibody levels and recipient’s antibody response before and after infusion of convalescent plasma to determine if there were any adverse reactions.
In the four patients studied, the use of convalescent plasma was not associated with antibody-dependent enhancement, in which antibodies developed during a previous infection cause a worsening of the response with subsequent infections, a concern that has been described in preclinical models of other coronaviruses. . Furthermore, convalescent plasma did not suppress the endogenous antibody response.
“We believe that convalescent plasma can provide the greatest benefit for patients who are in an early stage of their disease and have not yet generated endogenous antibodies,” Teachey said.
“Although the small sample size of our study does not allow us to draw definitive conclusions, we believe this method is safe and future research should include randomized controlled trials to examine more definitively the efficacy of convalescent plasma in the treatment of children. infected with COVID. 19. “
Source:
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Magazine reference:
Diorio, C., et al. (2020) Convalescent plasma for pediatric patients with SARS-CoV-2 associated acute respiratory distress syndrome. Pediatric blood and cancer. doi.org/10.1002/pbc.28693.
