Emilia vexler
11/12/2020 12:28 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 11/12/2020 12:28 PM
While there were no vaccines that today are tested on thousands of volunteers, plasma was believed to be "salvation."
And many hospitalized people even demanded it as a treatment against the coronavirus, although
it was always a clinical trial
.
Later, the plasma lost press in Argentina.
Since July, its use in serious patients due to Covid-19 was ruled out and, according to
Clarín
, the most important sanatoriums in the country, such as La Trinidad, implemented the protocol of telling hospitalized patients with moderate conditions, such as bilateral pneumonia, that " it has only a 50% chance of working. "
This Thursday, plasma is once again at the center of the pandemic scene.
And with a "monumental" news, announced on the River court.
The Infant Foundation, chaired by the prestigious infectologist
Fernando Polack
, shared this Thursday at noon at the SUM of the Antonio Vespucio Liberti Stadium the preliminary conclusions of its investigation.
The study "Evaluation of the efficacy of the administration of plasma of convalescent in early form against COVID-19 in older adults" took 6 months, demanded 180 thousand dollars and determined that
the plasma was 61% effective in preventing severe disease
.
“Normally our information is communicated after it is published and compared by pairs.
We decided to call this meeting to share the initial results, "said the specialist at the beginning of the press conference.
And he explained that this research, unlike other studies, "has the central characteristic of administering plasma in the first days of infection. We always think of plasma as early administration."
In explaining how the therapy was designed, he used the analogy of a thief in a room to point out that with the plasma they looked for the thief (the coronavirus) to enter the body.
Thus, it was administered within 72 hours of active mild symptoms, not in severe patients.
How the project was born
This project,
one of the most important studies in Latin America
for the effective treatment of Covid-19, worked on and monitored the evolution of 210 cases in their initial phase.
Then there were 500 cases.
In 14 hospitals in the Province and the City of Buenos Aires, how were you born?
Under the idea that the plasma in the blood of a person recovered from Covid-19 could cure a risky person if it was transfused as soon as he presented the first symptoms.
Or at least turn the virus into a cold.
“In March we started to think this.
In parallel, a list of volunteers was generated to donate plasma.
Those with the most antibodies were chosen and they were extracted ”, recalled the infectologist at the conference.
"The project seeks to
reduce by more or less half
the cases of elderly people who have severe coronavirus disease. The objective is to see if plasma can sooner rather than later reduce the coronavirus to a viral cold. We have concrete biological foundations to imagine that this deserves to be tested. But we do not know for sure if it will work ", Polack had told Clarín in May.
Plasma donation at Durand Hospital.
Photo Luciano Thieberger
Polack had also equated plasma with a vaccine, but these were times when neither was being injected into people.
Today, Sinopharm, Pfizer and Janssen are tested on volunteers from our country, and the Government is moving forward with the purchase of AstraZeneca and Sputnik V.
“Until there is a vaccine to generate defenses in the body against the coronavirus, we have to find a strategy to
borrow the defenses from another side
.
The first idea that medicine had more than a hundred years ago was to take the defenses of people who had had a disease and therefore their immune system already knew it.
For this reason, these people tend to have antibodies circulating in their blood that allow them to defend themselves against a new attack by the same virus, ”said the director of the investigation, which now produced its final results.
The Italian essay
At the beginning of October, data from a study in 12 health centers in Argentina - which was coordinated by the Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires - was released that sought to evaluate the efficacy of convalescent plasma in patients with severe pneumonia.
The conclusions of the trial, involving 334 infected people, were
not very encouraging
.
“The results of the PlasmAr study show that among hospitalized patients with Covid 19 pneumonia with criteria of severity, the use of convalescent plasma
did not produce a significant clinical benefit
at 7, 14 or 30 days of follow-up compared to the use of placebo ”, specifies the work.
However, plasma therapy
did not aggravate the condition
of the treated patients either: "With regard to the safety profile, there were no statistical differences in terms of adverse effects compared to placebo."
Plasma was tested as a therapeutic strategy against coronavirus.
Photo Luciano Thieberger
The trial included the Central Italian Hospital, the Italian Hospital of San Justo, the Austral University Hospital, the Ramos Mejía Hospital, the Trinidad Sanatorium, the Zabala Clinic, the Agote Sanatorium, the Santa Isabel Clinic, the British Hospital of Rosario , the Private Hospital of Córdoba, the Private Hospital of the Community of Mar del Plata and the Hospital Zonal Ramón Carrillo de Bariloche.
The researchers highlighted that the results obtained
mark "a milestone in the therapeutic strategies" for coronavirus
, since until the moment of its publication there was no reliable data on its efficacy.
ACE
Look also
One by one, how are the trials of the most promising vaccines against coronavirus
Dr. Polack's "antibody factory": what is the project that seeks to turn the coronavirus into a cold like
