A study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has said that the use of convalescent plasma therapy in coronavirus-infected patients does not help in reducing mortality or progression to severe COVID-19.
The 'open-label parallel-arm phase II multicentre randomized controlled trial' (PLACID Trial) was conducted across 39 public and private hospitals across India between April 22 to July 14 to investigate the effectiveness of convalescent plasma (CP) for the treatment of COVID-19, it said.
The convalescent plasma (CP) therapy involves taking antibodies from the blood of a person who has recovered from COVID-19 and transfusing those antibodies into an active coronavirus patient to help kickstart the immune system to fight the infection.
The CP was not associated with reduction in mortality or progression to severe COVID-19," the study said, adding this trial has high generalisability and approximates real-life setting of CP therapy in settings with limited laboratory capacity.
