NC hospitals try treating COVID-19 patients with plasma from survivors; donors needed
Duke Health, WakeMed and UNC Health are among hospital systems nationwide that are using plasma from survivors of COVID-19 to treat people who are still struggling with the illness.
And as demand for the so-called convalescent plasma grows, UNC Health has begun collecting donations from survivors, and WakeMed may soon do the same.
Plasma is the liquid portion of blood that contains antibodies, the proteins the body creates to fight threatening bacteria and viruses. The plasma of someone who has successfully fought off COVID-19 contains antibodies to resist coronavirus and could help someone who has not yet developed their own antibodies for the virus.
Plasma has been used to treat infectious diseases for more than 100 years; in recent decades it was given to people with H1N1 flu, Ebola and the coronavirus illnesses SARS and MERS.
But doctors don’t know for sure whether plasma from COVID-19 survivors will actually help other patients recover — and will do it without harmful side effects. But because there are no known cures for COVID-19, the Food and Drug Administration has allowed doctors to give it to severely ill patients and requires them to report the results to the Mayo Clinic, which is overseeing the program.
“We have no other validated effective therapy,” said Dr. Luther Bartelt, an infectious disease researcher at the UNC School of Medicine. “And historically convalescent plasma has been used and, in certain settings, looks promising.”
Four patients at UNC have received convalescent plasma so far, Bartelt said.
UNC collects convalescent plasma from people who tested positive for COVID-19 and who have been symptom-free for at least 14 days. It has had 15 donors so far, with another dozen scheduled. Collections are on Saturdays, by appointment only, in Chapel Hill.
Duke and WakeMed are receiving convalescent plasma through the Red Cross or The Blood Connection. Red Cross spokeswoman Maya Franklin said the agency has distributed hundreds of doses of convalescent plasma to hospitals nationwide so far and is eagerly seeking donors.
“We are adding more resources to qualify and collect from more donors in the weeks to come to help increase collections,” Franklin wrote in an email.
More than 3,000 COVID-19 patients have been given convalescent plasma nationwide, according to the Mayo Clinic. The New York Times reported this week that demand for the plasma has become fierce among patients and their families, with some taking to social media to find potential donors themselves.
Plasma given only to critically ill patients
Three Duke patients have received convalescent plasma, and a fourth was under consideration Wednesday, said Dr. Chris Woods, a professor of infectious diseases and medical microbiology.
Duke Health offers convalescent plasma to critically ill COVID-19 patients who are not able to take other experimental treatments, such as remdesivir, the drug developed by the University of North Carolina and Gilead Sciences that is being tested at Duke and other hospitals across the country. The National Institutes of Health announced Wednesday that COVID-19 patients who received remdesivir recovered faster than similar patients who received a placebo.
Giving convalescent plasma to people who have become critically ill with COVID-19 offers only a rough idea of whether it would be a good treatment for the disease, Woods said. He said it will take clinical trials, like the one being done for remdesivir, where some patients receive plasma and others a placebo, to determine how effective it is.
“The fact that it works is going to require those controlled studies,” Woods said. “But having the participation of people who have been infected in these research programs, in these donations programs, is so important.”
Researchers at Duke and UNC are also able to identify and measure the antibodies in plasma donated by COVID-19 survivors, which is one reason UNC wanted to begin collecting convalescent plasma donations on its own, Bartelt said. If convalescent plasma does prove effective at stopping COVID-19, isolating the antibodies would be a crucial step in creating a treatment for the illness.
“We need to identify the antibody and the cells that produce it,” he said. “Then you want to take those particular cells and turn them into factories to create clean antibodies.”
Plasma donors must meet all the requirements for blood donation. Here’s where to go for more information about convalescent plasma donation:
▪ The Red Cross, www.redcrossblood.org/
▪ The Blood Connection, thebloodconnection.org/
▪ UNC Health, GO.UNC.EDU/PLASMA or email questions to CCP_UNC@med.unc.edu.
▪ In the Charlotte area, OneBlood, www.oneblood.org/
OneBlood is also providing convalescent plasma to FirstHealth of the Carolinas, a non-profit hospital system based in Pinehurst that has completed three transfusions as of Thursday.
This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 10:31 AM.
