Covid treatment

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The United States Food and Drug Authority (FDA) allows the use of blood plasma for the treatment of COVID-19. Recovered patient's blood plasma is believed to be capable of being a therapy to treat COVID-19 patients. Even so, this claim of efficacy has not been scientifically proven through reliable research to be widely used.

How can blood plasma cure COVID-19 patients and why has the FDA given permission to use it? Check out the following reviews.

Use of blood plasma to treat COVID-19 patients

Many drug candidates, vaccines and herbal supplements are still in the process of being researched to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. One of them is blood plasma or convalescent plasma therapy.

Convalescent plasma or plasma therapy uses blood plasma that contains antibodies from a recovered COVID-19 patient.

When a person recovers from COVID-19, the immune system will usually form antibodies that can fight the disease. Antibodies are proteins that are formed specifically from an infection that a person has had. It is produced in large quantities by the human immune system to bind and fight viruses that infect the body. Antibodies are contained in blood plasma.

In the concept of vaccination, the body of a person who is immunized will be stimulated to grow antibodies. Meanwhile, convalescent plasma is done by transfusing other people's antibodies into the patient's body so that it offers immediate protection to the recipient, but is temporary.

Doctors can take blood plasma from patients cured of COVID-19, test its contents, and then purify it to filter out these antibodies. Then plasma therapy can be done by injecting it into a sick COVID-19 patient.

Injecting antibodies from patients who have recovered from COVID-19 is believed to be able to help fight the virus in the early days of infection until the infected patient's immune system is able to produce its own antibodies.

This method of blood plasma therapy has been used successfully in treating diseases caused by the Ebola virus. Generally this therapy works well, but one of the side effects is that it can cause severe allergies.

However, there is no strong evidence that blood plasma can treat patients infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.

COVID-19 Outbreak updates Country: IndonesiaData

1,024,298

Confirmed

831,330

Recovered

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A study released on Thursday (13/8) said that patients with severe symptoms who received plasma transfusions had shown an improvement in their health conditions. However, this study is not a formal clinical trial, still has scientific limitations, and has not been peer reviewed.

Researchers still have to prove that it was the administration of blood plasma that made the test participants better.

Currently, many countries are conducting research on blood plasma therapy for handling COVID-19 patients, including Indonesia. But no research has been completed and has been able to prove the effectiveness of this therapy.

In Indonesia, research related to blood plasma therapy was carried out by RSPAD Gatot Soebroto, Eijkman Institute for Molecular Biology, and Biofarma Bandung.

The United States has permitted the use of plasma therapy for coronavirus patients

The FDA has granted permission to use plasma to treat COVID-19 patients in America. Although scientific evidence of the effectiveness of this therapy is still not proven, the permit is still issued on the basis of authorization of emergency use due to epidemics.

This blood plasma therapy method was then applied to 70,000 patients in the US who had severe COVID-19 symptoms.

The FDA says initial trials suggest the use of this therapy is safe, although more evidence is needed to prove its effectiveness.

US President Donald Trump said this therapy was a powerful method and asked Americans who have recovered from COVID-19 to donate immediately.

The criteria allowed by the US authorities to donate blood plasma, namely:

1. People who have fully recovered from COVID-19, can be proven by a diagnosis sheet that states that they have tested positive for COVID-19.
2. It has been quarantined for 2 weeks after being declared cured.
3. Minimum age 17 years and weigh 110lbs (50kg).
4. In good health and negative from other infectious diseases.

World Health Organization (WHO) officials state that using recovered plasma is still an experimental treatment.

They added that the risks and side effects ranging from mild to severe should be considered.

"There are a number of clinical trials being conducted around the world looking at plasma recovered against standard treatment. Only a few of them have actually reported interim results and at this time, the quality of evidence is still very low, "said WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan, Monday (24/8).

The WHO has previously said that COVID-19 plasma therapy can be carried out experimentally through local production provided ethical and safety criteria are met.