New York will implement a successful treatment from 100 years ago to cure coronavirus patients

He COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project is made up of doctors and scientists from more than 20 institutions who have come together in recent weeks to deploy a formula to effectively combat the new coronavirus born in Wuhan, China last November and spread to the whole world in the last three months. The procedure will be used for the first time by the state of New York and is expected to be as successful as it was more than a hundred years ago when the spanish flu it took the lives of millions of people around the planet and was only stopped with this formula.

One of the first to start this study were researchers from the Universidad Johns Hopkins in Baltimore who started their projections in which the key to slowing down and treating the coronavirus could be hidden in the blood of those who have already recovered from the disease. The governor Andrew Cuomo announced plans to use convalescent plasma during a press conference on Monday. The treatment dates back centuries and was used during the 1918 flu epidemic. In that era, modern vaccines and antiviral drugs did not exist..

“There have been tests that show when a person is injected with the antibodies, which then stimulate and promote their immune system against that disease. It’s just a rehearsal. It’s a trial for people who are in serious condition, but the New York State Department of Health has been working on this with some of the best health care agencies in New York, and we think it’s promising, and we’re going to get started. that this week“, he pointed Cuomo.

State health officials NY confirmed that they plan to begin recruiting patients who have fully recovered from COVID-19 in the coming days. That effort would probably start in New Rochelle, the city suburb that was the center of the state’s initial outbreak a few weeks ago.

Although it may sound primitive to some, experts in the field say that therapy could be the best hope to combat the coronavirus until more sophisticated methods are developed that could take months or years. The Food and Drug Agency (FDA, for its acronym in English) informed that the approval of this treatment will be expeditious and that it is working around the clock to “To facilitate the development and availability” of convalescent plasma.

“This is great news. When we started talking about this a few weeks ago it was just an idea, and now it looks like it will come true“, He said Arturo Casadevall, an infectious disease expert from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, which has been calling for widespread use of convalescent plasma.

The method collects antibodies to fight the virus from the blood of previously infected patients. Transfusions were associated with milder symptoms and shorter hospital stays for patients during the outbreak of SARS 2002. For their part, the initial reports of China suggest that blood might be effective in attenuating the effects of COVID-19, the disease caused by coronavirus de Wuhan. according to NBC News. However, plasma transfusion therapy is not without risk if the patient is given the wrong blood type or inadvertently passed on other pathogens in a transfusion.

Doctors from nearly two dozen hospitals have joined the effort led by Johns Hopkins, including researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, he Medical Center from Stanford University in California and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, of NY. Investigators have been in contact with the FDA during the weekend.

“I am an infectious disease physician interested in history. He knew the history of what was done in the early 20th century with epidemics. They didn’t have vaccines back then, they didn’t have any drugs at that time, just like the situation we are facing now. But doctors knew that for certain conditions, blood could be taken from the immune system and used to prevent disease or treat those who became ill.“, indicated Casadevall, 63 years and born in Santa Clara, Cuba, in an interview with the same North American media.

Support from Academies of Medicine and Sciences

The new treatment that will be implemented in NY During this week he received the endorsements of the academies of Medicine, Sciences and Engineering, which constitutes a great advance for the therapy to be conducted as soon as possible in the U.S. The statement bears the signature of Marcia McNuttPresident, de la National Academy of Sciences, John L. AndersonPresident, de la National Academy of Engineering y de Victor J. DzauPresident, de la National Academy of Medicine.

“In light of the current situation in the United States, we believe it is essential to explore a wide range of options to treat the growing number of very seriously ill patients with COVID-19 respiratory disease. We strongly support the efforts of scientists and physicians to develop an effective vaccine, monoclonal antibodies, and new drugs, or to reuse existing drugs and therapies. One such effort that is especially promising is work to determine whether a tried-and-true treatment that has been found effective in treating infections (the production of passive immunity through the supply of convalescent plasma from recovered patients) has a role in the management of COVID-19. In fact, the FDA recently announced that this modality is among the therapeutic approaches that are actively considered.”Says the document.

The statement issued this Monday concludes: “While many questions about dosage, indications for use, safety, and efficacy will need to be answered before this approach can be used in patients, we strongly support the steps needed to assess whether convalescent plasma could be an important component of the fight. against COVID-19. We encourage collaboration and cooperation from academia, industry, and the federal government to accelerate scientific progress and regulatory approval of this promising approach. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine stand ready to help facilitate such collaboration.”.

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