A US team of Johns Hopkins experts has created a clinical guidebook to help hospitals and medical centres rapidly scale up their ability to deliver so-called convalescent plasma therapy, which leverages immune system components found in the plasma portion of blood from people who have recovered from COVID-19.
Evan Bloch, an Associate Professor of Pathology at the university’s School of Medicine, is part of the team that is working on convalescent therapy.
He said: “We’ve received many inquiries from healthcare providers looking to ramp up their ability to deliver this therapy.
“There is historical precedent for its use to prevent and treat viral illness. However, during the chaos of an epidemic, the therapy is often deployed without rigorously studying its effects. Carefully conducted studies are critically needed to understand which people are most likely to benefit from this therapy and how best to apply it to optimise that benefit.”
The paper details how to deploy convalescent plasma, and is aimed to help people worldwide who are preparing to use this therapy against COVID-19.
The guidebook has been published online in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
