Effect of Convalescent Plasma Therapy on Time to Clinical Improvement in Patients With Severe and Life-threatening COVID-19: A Randomized Clinical Trial
RCT (terminated early, n=103 in China) found that convalescent plasma therapy added to standard treatment, compared with standard treatment alone, did not result in a statistically significant improvement in time to clinical improvement within 28 days in this population.
Source:
Journal of the American Medical Association
SPS commentary:
An editorial notes that as the trial was terminated before reaching its targeted original sample size of 200 patients, it was underpowered and many comparisons between the convalescent plasma group and the control group were not statistically significant. It suggests that these results, while preliminary and subject to important study limitations, should stimulate more clinical trials to establish the optimal conditions for antibody therapies against COVID-19 and future studies should focus on determining efficacy in less severely ill patients. It adds that if the efficacy of convalescent plasma is established by future studies, the ratio of donor to patients is favourable because individuals who recover from COVID-19 can donate 2 or 3 units of plasma, which could be used to treat more than 1 person with COVID-19 disease.