Using blood to treat Coronavirus (COVID-19)

In this video, we speak to Michael Joyner, anaesthesiologist and physiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota about using the blood of coronavirus survivors to treat patients. To contact The Physiological Society: [email protected] Transcript: Hospitals in New York, the current epicentre of the US COVID-19 outbreak, are using blood from coronavirus survivors to treat currently infected COVID-19 patients in an effort to reduce their time in the intensive care unit. Other efforts to prevent sick patients from needing intensive care are also being activated. One of our Members, Professor Michael Joyner, anaesthesiologist and physiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota is part of the team of physicians trialling this on patients. This approach, called convalescent plasma, uses the part of the blood that contains antibodies. Antibodies are proteins found in the blood plasma that attack specific viruses or bacteria, like COVID-19. By giving these pre-made antibodies to a patient, it means they don’t have to produce their own. As blood plasma is immediately available, this treatment can serve as a stopgap until drugs and vaccines are developed. The convalescent plasma approach dates back to the 1890s and has been trialled in several outbreaks across the world including the 2002-03 SARS outbreak, where patients with the transfusion were more likely to be discharged from hospital. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has now classified convalescent plasma as an “investigational new drug,” so doctors can use it to treat patients who have serious or life threatening COVID-19 infections, even before it is approved. Hospitals across the United States in collaboration with the US FDA are now launching clinical trials to gather evidence on how well the blood plasma treatment works. Joyner and his colleagues hope to improve on previous results by choosing donors with particularly high levels of antibodies, and treating patients who are most likely to benefit. Not only could this treatment be available quicker than drugs or vaccines, it is also cheap and easy to deploy in any part of the world.