First-ever research on the convalescent plasma therapy in children with fatal COVID-19 has been published in the journal Pediatric Blood and Cancer. The report says the treatment might show positive results.
The therapy can be administered in currently ill patients to generate an antibody response that renders the virus inert, said researchers from Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), US. The therapy showed effectiveness amongst adults, but the treatment had not been studied in children.
“Some children who contract this virus can develop very serious complications, so even with limited data in adults, we believed it was worth exploring the use of convalescent plasma as a possible treatment option,” said David Teachey, senior author of the study, from CHOP.
The study consisted of four patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome.
In the patients, the use of convalescent plasma was not associated with antibody-dependent enhancement, in which antibodies developed during a previous infection cause a worsened response with subsequent infections, a concern that has been described in preclinical models of other coronaviruses.
“We believe that convalescent plasma may provide the greatest benefit for patients who are early into their illness and have not yet generated endogenous antibodies,” he said.
David further added, “While the small sample size of our study does not allow us to draw any definitive conclusions, we believe this method is safe and future research should include randomised controlled trials to more definitively examine how effective convalescent plasma may be in treating children infected with COVID-19.”
