Experts continue to stress that the therapy holds promise, and there is a growing need for plasma donors across the country to give a fighting chance for #COVID19 patients with severe symptoms.
➡️What is convalescent plasma therapy?⬅️
It is a passive antibody therapy where the immunity of a recovered patient is transferred to a sick person using blood plasma. When attacked by a pathogen, our immune system produces proteins called antibodies to fight the infection.
If the infected person can produce sufficient antibodies, he can recover from the disease caused by that pathogen.
➡️Has the therapy been used before?⬅️
-Passive Antibody Therapy is an age-old technique to treat infectious diseases.
-German physiologist Emil von Behring and Japanese physician Baron Kitasato Shibasaburo are the pioneers of modern therapeutic Immunology.
➡️Is the therapy effective?⬅️
-First #COVID19 patient who underwent #PlasmaTherapy in India recovered during last week of April in Delhi. Positive results have come from states like Gujarat, Kerala.
-The first patients to receive it in Maharashtra failed to recover & died.
-Several studies in multiple countries have reiterated the importance of ‘passive antibody therapy’ as a success to treat #COVID19.
-Some researchers have expressed reservations against using the therapy, quoting some side effects like transfusion-transmitted infections.
➡️Is plasma therapy safe?⬅️
↪️Like any other medical procedure, there are substantial risks involved in convalescent plasma therapy as well.
↪️During the process of blood transfusion, there are chances of inadvertent infections getting transferred to blood cells of the patient.
↪️The treatment can suppress the body’s natural immune system, thereby leading to chances of re-infection, though such cases have not been reported yet.
↪️There are set criteria for a patient to be eligible for plasma therapy.
Though plasma therapy offers new light in the complex treatment of #COVID19 infections, availability of infrastructure, medical facilities, suitable donors, medicines and equipment pose a wide hindrance.
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While searching for life in the Gulf of Mexico, researchers pulled out a new bizarre-looking species of isopod, whose head resembles the Darth Vader from Star Wars!
This new-found crustacean, named Bathonymus yucatanensis, has 14 legs and is around 26 cm long — approximately 25 times larger than its closest relative, the common woodlouse.
While these blonde creatures seem pretty scary, the "Vanilla Vaders" are, in fact, harmless to humans.
Their huge size is only due to deep-sea gigantism — a phenomenon wherein ocean dwellers grow bigger than their terrestrial relatives due to lack of sunlight.
This super-Earth is a rocky world, on which a year is equal to just 11 Earth days.
The short orbit is down to the red dwarfs being a lot smaller than the Sun that centres our solar system. But the smaller sizes also make their gravitational fields less expansive than the Sun's.
Therefore, Ross 508b revolves around its red dwarf at a distance of just 5 million km. Mercury, in comparison, is about 60 million km from the Sun.
The short distance between this super-Earth & its red dwarf begs the question: how could it possibly be habitable?
#Japan is making grand plans of creating interplanetary #trains and champagne flute-like glass habitats in its bid to send and host humans on the #Moon and #Mars!
An interplanetary transportation system dubbed the 'Hexatrack', which maintains a gravity of 1G during long-distance travel to mitigate the effects of prolonged exposure to low gravity, has been proposed by #Japanese researchers.
The #trains will also possess 'Hexacapsules', which are essentially hexagon-shaped capsules with a moving device in the middle.
In 2012, the almost-complete skeleton of a new kind of #dinosaur was found in the northern Patagonia region of #Argentina.
The dinosaur has been christened #Meraxes gigas. The generic epithet is an ode to a dragon in the #GameOfThrones series.
Standing at the height of 11 m (36 ft) and weighing roughly 4000 kgs, the #dinosaur sported several crests, bumps and horns on its skull, which lent it a menacing appearance.
But the highlight of the findings is that the dinosaur had teeny-tiny arms, just like the #Trex!
Dr Jose, along with an international research team from the US, UK and Australia, will be examining the Galactic Centre Cloud (GCC) — the central molecular zone of our Milky Way — in April 2023.
They have been allotted 27.3 hours over the access period of 12 months.