The therapeutic effectiveness of Convalescent plasma therapy on treating COVID-19 patients residing in respiratory care units in Baghdad, Iraq

  1. Anwar M. Rasheed
  2. Dhurgham F Fatak
  3. Hashim A. Hashim
  4. Mohammed F Maulood
  5. Khulood K Kabah
  6. Yaqoob A. Almusawi
  7. Ahmed S Abdulamir

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Abstract

Objectives

The current COVID-19 pandemic needs unconventional therapies to tackle the resulted high morbidity and mortality. Convalescent plasma is one of the therapeutic approaches that might be of benefit.

Methods

Forty nine early-stage critically-ill COVID-19 patients residing in RCU of three hospitals in Baghdad, Iraq were included, 21 received convalescent plasma while 28 did not receive, namely control group. Recovery or death, length of stay in hospital, and improvement in the clinical course of the disease were monitored clinically along with laboratory monitoring through SARS-CoV-2 RNA detection via PCR, and SARS-CoV-2 IgG and IgM serological monitoring.

Results

Patients received convalescent plasma showed reduced duration of infection in about 4 days, and showed less death rate, 1/21 versus 8/28 in control group. In, addition, all of the patients received convalescent plasma showed high levels of SARS-CoV-2 IgG and IgM 3 days after plasma transfusion. Plasma from donors with high levels of SARS-CoV-2 IgG and donors with positive SRAS-CoV-2 IgM showed better therapeutic results than other donors.

Conclusions

Convalescent plasma therapy is an effective mode of therapy if donors with high level of SARS-Cov2 antibodies are selected and if recipients were at their early stage of critical illness, being no more than 3 days in RCU.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.06.24.20121905: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: All of the patients were voluntarily included in the study by a written consent from their relatives.
    RandomizationAll of the patients were with pneumonia and residing in RCU; As a result of ABO compatibility and limited plasma, 21 of the patients were randomly chosen to take CP, while other age- and sex-matched 28 patients were under the conventional therapy as control group.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableThe donors should be younger than 50 years, healthy, non-pregnant females, with no comorbidities, and those who showed moderate COVID-19 infections.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    The donors’ plasma was tested using SARS-CoV-2 IgG Antibody ELISA.
    SARS-CoV-2 IgG
    suggested: None
    Detection and evaluation of anti-SARS-Cov2 antibodies: The SARS-CoV-2 IgG semi-quantitatively and SARS-CoV-2 IgM qualitatively were assessed in the serum of both the donors and recipients by using SARS-CoV-2 IgG Antibody ELISA kit
    anti-SARS-Cov2
    suggested: None
    For the detection of SARS-CoV-2 IgM antibodies, a qualitative strip test was used giving just negative or positive results.
    SARS-CoV-2 IgM
    suggested: None

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:

    IdentifierStatusTitle
    NCT04441424CompletedConvalescent Plasma Therapy on Critically-ill Novel Coronavi…

    Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.24.20121905v2 on medRxiv
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.06.24.20121905v1 on medRxiv