Experts raise questions on plasma therapy, requests government to review the guidelines

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A group of 18 top doctors and public health professionals in the country have questioned the use of plasma therapy to treat the coronavirus epidemic.

The group has written to Dr K Vijay Raghavan, Principal Scientific Adviser to Government of India, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), terming plasma therapy futile. This is what they have demanded from the government to review again.

What is plasma therapy?

Convalescent plasma therapy involves extracting plasma from the blood of a person who has beaten the coronavirus and transfers it to an infected person. Plasma is a component of blood.

When a person recovers from the corona, antibodies are killed in his body to kill the pandemic SARS-CoV-2 virus.

It was said that through plasma, those antibodies reach the infected patient and strengthen the immune system and kill the virus.

Three major studies found plasma therapy not to be effective – Expert

Medical experts have cited three well-known studies against the use of plasma therapy in their paper. 

This includes the ICMR-PLACID test, the Oxford University-run recovery test and the PlasmAr trial.

Experts said that all these studies had found no benefit from plasma therapy in corona infected patients.

The group of experts has also suggested the government review its guidelines in this regard.

The top public health professionals, including Dr Gagandeep Kang of Vellore Christian Medical College, have signed on to write the letter.

Other signatories include Dr Shahid Jamil, Director of Biomedical School of Biosciences at Ashoka University, Center for Mental Health, Law and Policy, Indian Law Society Director Soumitra Pathare, Yogesh Jain, Preeti Meena, Pratap Tharyan, Prashant Srinivas, Omran John, Kamna Kakkar, Jyoti Tyagi and Gautam Menon etc.

Plasma Therapy Increases Weight on Healthcare Infrastructure

In addition to doubting the efficacy of plasma therapy, it places a greater burden on healthcare infrastructure.

This is because the first plasma requires a donor. He is then examined several times before offering it to an infected patient. 

Some doctors even say that they have to use the method to avoid the anger of patients’ families. However, it has no widespread effect.

This is the condition of corona infection in India

In the last 24 hours in India, 3,29,942 new cases of infection with the coronavirus were reported, and 3,876 patients died. A decline in new cases has been observed since the last two days.

With this, the total number of infected people in the country has increased to 2,29,92,517. Of these, 2,49,992 people have lost their lives due to this dangerous virus. The number of active cases has decreased to 37,15,221 after several days.

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