Early results on use of convalescent plasma in US are out as a preprint and look promising: Increased survival in study comparing 39 #covid19 patients with retrospectively matched controls. RCT needed, of course, but this will increase demand for CP. medrxiv.org/content/10.110…
“Interestingly, these data suggest that the survival effect of convalescent plasma may begin to manifest more than 1 week after transfusion. If this observation is borne out in subsequent studies, it could indicate that convalescent plasma prevents longer-term complications...”
“We did not observe significant benefit of convalescent plasma in intubated patients, consistent with past literature demonstrating that passive antibody transfer therapies are most efficacious early in disease.
However, the number of intubated patients in this study is small...”
However, the number of intubated patients in this study is small...”
Authors point out the strengths of the study: it is “the largest cohort of #COVID19 patients treated with convalescent plasma thus far worldwide” and huge number of cases admitted in NYC at the time “permitted an aggressive matching algorithm”
Weakness: “the conclusions drawn from these data are not as robust as a prospective, randomized, placebo-controlled study.” And cohort of CP recipients “is highly heterogeneous in regards to oxygen needs at the time of transfusion and the duration of symptoms prior to admission”
This was supposed to be further up in the thread: “As of 1 May 2020, 12.8% of plasma recipients and 24.4% of the 1:4 matched control patients had died (21.6% in the 1:2 matched dataset), and 71.8% and 66.7% (68.9%) had been discharged alive, respectively”
