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(HealthNewsDigest.com) – A clinical trial now underway is looking at whether blood plasma donated by people recovered from 2019 coronavirus disease can improve oxygenation and reduce the requirement for mechanical ventilation, intensive care unit (ICU) admission, and death. Eligible subjects will be randomized in a 1:1 ratio to receive either anti–SARS-CoV-2 plasma or placebo (saline solution), with the former donated by people at the New York Blood Center (NYBC).
Within the NYU Langone arm of the trial, much of plasma was donated by employees, including frontline healthcare workers, who have recovered from the infection. After NYU Langone administration issued a call for plasma on April 4, roughly 300 employees volunteered to donate within days. Many have gone to NYBC to donate.
“At this point, almost everyone in New York has a friend or loved one who has been diagnosed with COVID-19,” says Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine principal investigator Liise-anne Pirofski, MD, chief of infectious diseases at Montefiore and Einstein and a leader of the national COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project. “The clinical trial provides an opportunity for people who have recovered from this devastating disease to help others in need. We are humbled by the outpouring of donors who have come forth to provide their plasma and honored to have the opportunity to determine scientifically if convalescent plasma is a treatment option for COVID-19 amid this unprecedented pandemic.”
Also study investigators from NYU Langone are David Kaminetzky, MD; Gillian G. Baptiste, MD; Tania Kupferman, MD; Rabi Upadhyay, MD Stephanie Sterling, MD; Lalitha Parameswaran, MD; Shadi Yaghi, MD; Aaron S. Lord, MD; Mary K. O’Keeffe, MD; and Anthony Corcoran, MD. These efforts have been led and supported by Corita R. Grudzen, MD, vice chair for research in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Emergency Medicine, and Judith S. Hochman, MD, the Harold Snyder Family Professor of Cardiology and senior associate dean for clinical sciences at NYU Langone.