This is the Google translation of an article in ABC, a Spanish newspaper. ABC has adopted a very focused anti Trump editorial line, therefore its articles always include a fuzzy or subtle attack against anything Trump may have done or said. ABC is read by a large Hispanic audience in the US, therefore the anti Trump slant is a clear attempt to influence US elections.
The bottom line of the article, if we strip away the bullshit, is that Wuhan hospitalized patients treated with the blood plasma from recovering or recovered patients don't die. The key is to give them the plasma during the first week after the onset of symptoms.
Article follows:
"It is not conclusive yet, but the plasma of those of the patients recovered from Covid could be a good ally to avoid deaths and admissions to ICUs. The first clinical trial, carried out in 20 hospitals and blood transfusion centers throughout Spain, reveals encouraging results for the treatment of the pandemic. Transfusing the blood with the antibodies of convalescent people who have overcome the virus could slow the cascading worsening of the sick, the researchers conclude.
The study, coordinated by the Puerta de Hierro Majadahonda Hospital in Madrid, offers a small but revealing sample of 81 patients during the first wave of the virus. At random, half were given plasma plus a standard treatment (remdesivir, hydroxychloroquine, dexamethasone ...) and the rest (the control group) medication without plasma. All were treated with a single dose of plasma and received medical aids for respiratory support. Six of the 43 patients in the control group - who did not receive the transfusion with the antibodies - worsened, needed to be admitted to the intensive care unit and received assisted respiration. Fourteen percent died, but none of the 38 patients treated with plasma lost their lives. The survival rate of these patients was one hundred percent.
Works in the early stage
“We believe that the therapy has worked because we treat our patients in an early stage of the disease, when they had just been hospitalized and it had only been 7-8 days since the onset of the first symptoms. At that time, there is a viral peak, but the disease has not yet triggered an inflammatory storm. The plasma provides new antibodies that reinforce the immune system and help the patient to fight against the infection ", explains Rafael Duarte, coordinator of the Spanish study together with the researcher Cristina Avendaño.
Duarte's analysis agrees with the results of two other studies conducted in China and the Netherlands, which included hospitalized patients with more severe forms of Covid-19, some admitted to ICUs. In both studies, the conclusion is different from the Spanish study. Plasma was not helpful, probably because the patients treated were more severe cases in which transfusions did not appear to be the best option.
Who benefits?
Who can benefit from transfusions, at what time, at what age or with what complication of Covid, are questions that still have no answer. Spanish research wants to answer them in a new phase of the study that will include more patients.
The results of the Spanish studies will be added to an international scientific initiative that aims to add several clinical trials, "like the pieces of a great puzzle," says Duarte. Only then can it be offered as a non-experimental treatment, he says, referring to the accelerated approval that the United States has already done. "Now the available scientific evidence does not advise it, although the United States Drug Administration may have information that is not in the public domain," he says. If it worked, there would be an apparently safe and inexpensive treatment that would not depend on the production of the pharmaceutical industry in the absence of other alternatives. And most importantly, capable of saving lives.
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