Columbus Regional Health has joined a national effort to transfuse antibodies from the plasma of COVID-19 survivors to treat patients who are struggling to survive the virus.
The treatment, called convalescent plasma therapy, is a century-old therapeutic strategy that has been used to combat the flu and measles before the advent of vaccines, and more recently against MERS, SARS and Ebola.
With no approved treatment for COVID-19 and more than 31,000 deaths in the United States, including at least five in Bartholomew County, the unproven therapy is said to offer a glimmer of hope in the fight against a virus that researchers and doctors are just beginning to understand.
This week, CRH officials said they had administered the therapy to two COVID-19 patients with life-threatening infections at Columbus Regional Hospital.
As of Thursday, there were 12 patients in isolation at Columbus Regional Hospital with COVID-19, with two listed in “critical-stable” condition and 10 in stable condition. A total of five CRH patients with the virus have died since the start of the pandemic.
“After our experience with some of these critically ill patients, particularly those in the ICU, and finding that frustration that we just don’t have great treatment for COVID-19 at this point — and that’s really a nationwide statement, nobody has great treatment — we looked through all the research to see if we could find what we felt like would be some additional therapy we could offer,” said Dr. Raymond Kiser, medical director of hospital care physicians at CRH.
“This really is the first virus that we’ve had (in Columbus) where we didn’t have other therapy to treat it,” he added.
For more on this story, see Friday’s Republic.
