After getting the approval from the Drug Controller General of India, the Delhi ILBS(Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences) lab began testing the efficiency of Plasma therapy for the treatment of Covid-19. The center has expert hematologists for the trial tests of serum doses. The state of Kerala had started these experiments a week ago as a task force was already set up and given nod by the Indian Council for medical research (ICMR). Kerala is the first state to experiment with the novel method for Covid treatment.
The therapy uses plasma – a component of blood – extracted from healthy patients who have recovered from Covid-19 to treat those who are critical. The antibodies against the Coronavirus will be present in the blood plasma of those who have recovered from the disease. In Plasma therapy these antibodies are extracted from the blood of recovered patients and the serum is injected to serious coronavirus disease (Covid-19) patients.
“The antibodies from the recovered person will theoretically help critical patients in fighting the infection. It can be beneficial in the absence of any other vaccines to treat Covid-19. This procedure has been tried for several other viral diseases as well,” said Dr Sarin, director, ILBS.
“We take around 300-500 milliliters of blood from those healthy people who have recovered from the infection and have high antibody level, from which plasma is derived, frozen and then administered to patients who are critical and have no other form of treatment available to them,” he said.
A real challenge is to pick Covid-19 survivors with high anti-body levels as India does not have antibody test kits. So Covid survivors with good health and no comorbidities like diabetes and heart conditions will only be chosen for trial tests by ILBS.
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