Abstract
More than one year into the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, healthcare systems across the world continue to be overwhelmed with soaring daily cases. The treatment spectrum primarily includes ventilation support augmented with repurposed drugs and/or convalescent plasma transfusion (CPT) from recovered COVID-19 patients. Despite vaccine variants being recently developed and administered in several countries, challenges in global supply chain logistics limit their timely availability to the wider world population, particularly in developing countries. Given the measured success of conventional CPT in treating several infections over the past decade, recent studies have reported its effectiveness in decreasing the duration and severity of COVID-19 symptoms. In this review, we conduct a literature search of published studies investigating the use of CPT to treat COVID-19 patients from January 2020 to January 2021. The literature search identified 181 records of which 39 were included in this review. A random-effects model was used to aggregate data across studies, and mortality rates of 17 vs. 32% were estimated for the CPT and control patient groups, respectively, with an odds ratio (OR) of 0.49. The findings indicate that CPT shows potential in reducing the severity and duration of COVID-19 symptoms. However, early intervention (preferably within 3 days), recruitment of donors, and plasma potency introduce major challenges for its scaled-up implementation. Given the low number of existing randomized clinical trials (RCTs, four with a total of 319 patients), unanticipated risks to CPT recipients are highlighted and discussed. Nevertheless, CPT remains a promising COVID-19 therapeutic option that merits internationally coordinated RCTs to achieve a scientific risk–benefit consensus.
Highlights
Multiple cases of acute respiratory syndrome with unclear precursors were recorded during December 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China
The literature search identified a total of 181 articles, of which 63 articles remained after removing duplicates
The remaining 39 articles included in this review were geographically distributed across the following countries: China (13), USA (11), Mexico (2), South Korea (2), Turkey (2), Argentina (1), France (1), Hungary (1), Italy (1), Iran (1), Iraq (1), Netherlands (1), Qatar (1), and Spain (1)
Summary
Multiple cases of acute respiratory syndrome with unclear precursors were recorded during December 2019 in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in central China. Global- and national-scale recovery timelines remain unclear amidst the uncertainty in treatment approaches and the emergence of new COVID-19 mutant strains [6]. Remdesevir has been the only repurposed drug authorized by the United States (US) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) solely for emergency use [8]. Other drugs such as Hydroxychloroquinine [9], Ivermectin [10], and Oseltamivir [11] have been reportedly found to be comparably effective to standard supportive care for COVID-19 patients. International efforts have been focused on vaccine development, which is naturally the product of several years of research and clinical trials before being authorized for general use
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