Article from Johns Hopkins about a promising potential covid-19 treatment

[$tevie]

A fast-tracked therapy shows promise
Under the leadership of immunologist Arturo Casadevall, Johns Hopkins has spearheaded an effort to use convalescent serum therapy as a potential COVID-19 treatment, helping to establish a network of at least 40 hospitals and blood banks in 20 states to collect, isolate, and process blood plasma from COVID-19 survivors. If early promising studies on the therapy done in China are confirmed by U.S. trials, thousands of survivors might soon line up to donate their antibody-rich plasma. "I absolutely think this could be the best treatment we have for the next few months," Hopkins pathologist Aaron Tobian says.

https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/04/08/arturo-ca...a-profile/

[Filliam H. Muffman]

I can't find it at the moment, but there was a recent brief study published by Chinese researchers that showed having COVID-19 seems to generate far fewer antibodies. To the extent that titer results imply people might not be immune to reinfection in the near future, and serum treatment might not be as effective as with other diseases.

[Janit]

Filliam H. Muffman wrote:
I can't find it at the moment, but there was a recent brief study published by Chinese researchers that showed having COVID-19 seems to generate far fewer antibodies. To the extent that titer results imply people might not be immune to reinfection in the near future, and serum treatment might not be as effective as with other diseases.

Would be good to know which population(s) they studied, and if it's true regardless of the severity of the illness.

It could be that those with severe illness are a subpopulation with poor antibody titers, and that's why the disease was able to progress. And that those with milder illness fought it off because of higher antibody titers. This in turn could be due to state of health, or genetic variation in the antibody generating system.

Need more data! Always!

[Sarcany]

Someone did the math when that was first announced last week.

It might be useful in edge-cases, but you can't harvest enough antibodies from the survivors to make a dent in those poised to die from the virus.

[rjmacs]

Sarcany wrote:
Someone did the math when that was first announced last week.

It might be useful in edge-cases, but you can't harvest enough antibodies from the survivors to make a dent in those poised to die from the virus.

Hence the rush for monoclonal antibodies.... but they still have to go through all the clinical trial other pharmaceuticals do.

[PeterB]

rjmacs wrote:
[quote=Sarcany]
Someone did the math when that was first announced last week.

It might be useful in edge-cases, but you can't harvest enough antibodies from the survivors to make a dent in those poised to die from the virus.

Hence the rush for monoclonal antibodies.... but they still have to go through all the clinical trial other pharmaceuticals do.
That's what this guy is doing, who I posted about awhile back: http://forums.macresource.com/read.php?1...sg-2467875