CONVALESCENT PLASMA THERAPY

CONVALESCENT PLASMA THERAPY

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Our blood consist of 45% formed elements and 55% blood plasma.

When formed elements are removed from blood a straw-colored a liquid called blood plasma is left.

Blood plasma is separated from the blood by the process of centrifugation in which a tube of fresh blood containing anticoagulant is made to spin in a centrifuge machine until the blood cells fall to the bottom of the tube.

                            Plasma maintains the ph of blood and due to containing antibody it has the ability to fight against any invading pathogen such as bacteria and virus, that enters our body from outside.

What is Convalescent?

The term convalescent means recovering from any kind of disease.

UNDERSTANDING CONVALESCENT PLASMA THERAPY

When a normal healthy person gets infected by a bacteria or virus, and gets well after the treatment than, it is possible that after 14 -16 days ( depending upon a person body capability to produce antibodies) he/ she body starts making antibodies i.e IgM and IgG naturally, which is basically a protein produce especially against a specific antigen ( foreign pathogen) which have infected our body.

In this case, if the same person gets infected by the same the virus in the future, in this case, which is a coronavirus, it is possible that the person be recovered within 2-3 days with mild or almost no symptom of infection.

The process of plasma therapy is based on this IgM and IgG transfusion, to make it more clear let's consider an example- Suppose if a family member requires the same group of blood as you, before giving blood it has to pass through a cross test, because sometimes even the same blood group reject each other, but it accepts the process of plasma therapy will be a simple blood transfusion. But since the disease is pandemic and we have to save a large population who are not blood-related in this case the chance of rejection increases from the recipient to the donor.

So, in the case of plasma therapy, laboratory workers extract out IgM and IgG from the blood plasma of a recovered patient and transmit it to the donor body to fight against the infection. If the treatment starts in its earlier stage the possibility of recovery is faster.

                        While there is no proven treatment/ vaccine available for coronavirus disease, whole blood collected from patients in the convalescent phase of infection has been used as an empirical treatment with successful result in a small group of COVID-19 cases.

NOTE-

The plasma is extracted from the patient who has been recovered, and had already suffered from the infection, which means even after recovery through their body has produced antibodies they are still weak, due to which we cannot take a large amount of blood from their body but the requirement during this time is high, so we need more such types of peoples who are willing to donate in order to save a large population.