Blood of Recovered Coronavirus Patients Gives Temporary Immunity

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Passive antibody therapy is where the blood of patients who have just survived and are recovering from coronavirus is taken and given to the most at-risk people (old but healthy enough to take the treatment).

Can they also use the blood of people with mild cases? If we can do the proper tracing can we find mild cases, medium cases and use their blood too?

This means the 80% mild cases and the 7% more serious but not needing ICU cases could help provide immunity to seniors.

If we have 10,000 cases then maybe 8000-9000 could be mild but useful for immunizing the elderly (80+) in the hot zone. It also is used to improve the condition of those who are sick and need an immune system boost. We would be scrambling but we would be better at staying ahead of it and preventing deaths and ICU cases.

John Hopkins University is funding efforts to begin setting up antibody therapy operations for COVID–19 in the Baltimore area in the coming weeks. Doctors in New York are also investigating the treatment, Casadevall says, while internationally, Japan’s largest pharmaceutical company is looking at developing an antibody-based drug to combat coronavirus.

There are still a lot of unknowns, including how much convalescent serum is needed to be effective to protect people. China is already using this therapy on a few hundred people. They are providing the antibody boost to people and it has helped those sick with coronavirus to be less sick.

The blood of the strong survivors can be used to help those who are more vulnerable to coronavirus.

Historical and current anecdotal data on use of convalescent serum suggest it is safe in coronavirus infection, the high mortality of COVID-19, particularly in elderly and vulnerable persons, suggests that the benefits of its use in those at high risk for or with early disease outweigh the risks. However, for all cases where convalescent serum administration is considered, a risk-benefit assessment must be conducted to assess individual variables.

Deployment and proposed use

To deploy convalescent serum administration for COVID-19 the following six conditions must be met:
(i) availability of a population of donors who have recovered from the disease and can donate convalescent serum;
(ii) blood banking facilities to process the serum donations;
(iii) availability of assays, including serological assays, to detect SARS-CoV-2 in serum and virological assays to measure viral neutralization;
(iv) virology laboratory support to perform these assays;
(v) prophylaxis and therapeutic protocols, which should ideally include randomized clinical trials to assess the efficacy of any intervention and measure immune responses; and
vi) regulatory compliance, including institutional review board approval, which may vary depending on location.

Ideally, the use of convalescent serum would involve multiple centers, follow randomized control protocols, and have a single center as a governing body. Each of these conditions should be available in developed areas affected by COVID-19. At least one pharmaceutical company, Takeda, is gearing up to generate antibody preparations against SARS2-CoV-2 from COVID-19 convalescent sera. Producing highly purified preparations containing a high titer of neutralizing antibodies against SARS2-CoV-2 is preferable to convalescent sera given that these are safer and have higher activity. Unfortunately, such preparations will not be available for many months, whereas locally produced convalescent sera could be available much sooner.

SOURCES – The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Xinhua
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

11 thoughts on “Blood of Recovered Coronavirus Patients Gives Temporary Immunity”

  1. Likewise, I suspect the world is reacting much better than we would be in a timeline with no AIDS.

  3. I think this pandemic will act as a vaccine for the global healthcare system. Between new medical means such as the ones you mention, to improved protocols, maybe new international treaties for similar future situations, etc. With some luck and a bunch of effort, the world should be much better prepared for next time.

  4. This emergency seems to be enabling a lot of bureaucratic barriers to be blown through, and both proven but abandoned techniques such as you discuss here, and experimental but promising techniques, are being tried.

    It may be that this was the kick in the rear that medicine needed, to get out of the bureaucratic rut it had fallen into. It’s unfortunate, but it often takes existential threats to cause institutions to drop secondary considerations, and focus once again on their core purposes.

    My hope is that the practice of medicine in this country will look very different a year from now, with a renewed emphasis on antisepsis, actually identifying pathogens when people fall sick, and very rapid vaccine development.

  5. Call it the Boomer and Greatest Gen plague. This virus, like SARS, binds to a receptor that relies on a protein (S) to produce the proper antibodies. Like SARS, this virus uses the empty protein receptors to replicate in a host cell. The production of said protein binds to the receptors and produces the antibodies, however natural production a regulation of this protein decreases with age. decreases with age. Studies show that trying to introduce more of the protein damages a persons immune response to other agents. Hence this impacts older people more and giving them the protein as a cure doesn’t help.

  6. Great idea to consider every treatment potential. This one is probably not that high on a list given the deployment/logistics issues. But maybe someone will be inventive and solve this too.

    One thing that’s been on my mind is whether all these therapy and drug experiments will benefit humans in other ways? Can a antiviral “cure” for Covid19 be used, or a derivative of it, in other diseases? Like many discoveries, it could be that someone stumbles upon a cure for something else too. Lots of science going on, lots of trial and error, lots of fast tracking the approval process.

    Maybe the entire end-to-end process of biological sciences will be reinvented with this pandemic. Imagine taking this to cancer. Allison used immunotherapy to cure 50% of metastatic melanoma, up from 5% (5yr OS). I think we are entering a truly golden age in biological science. If we live to tell the tale.

  8. Bad on my for spelling error. In reality, I don’t think this is going to be much of a thing. The new Y2k. People are going to die, some will get very sick and have lung damage, but it’s not the millions projected by some models. It’s being overdone in my opinion, but you should wash and avoid crowds etc. Know your risks and act accordingly. It’s a time to be mindful of others and be team player and flatten out the curve so we can end the ill-placed panic.

  10. The herd has to be thinned once in a while. If the weak survive, the herd becomes weak. And, judging by average age of decedents globally, U.S. Social Security is on track to last a little longer before it crumbles to the ground. You millennials should be getting infected and visit grandma and grandpa before your taxes go through the ceiling paying for them to live on the beach in Florida. I say this tongue in cheek.

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