Convalescent plasma therapy is the treatment in which plasma that is removed from the blood of a person who has recovered from a disease is transfused into a person with the disease that fight against the causative agents and make patient safe from the diseased condition.

1. Convalescent plasma therapy
regarding COVID-19
Anup Muni Bajracharya

2. Convalescent plasma therapy-CPT
CPT is an experimental treatment that some
doctors are using for people with severe
coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
Convalescent - a person who is recovering after an illness or
medical treatment.
Plasma - the clear, straw-colored liquid portion of blood
that remains after red blood cells, white blood cells,
platelets and other cellular components are removed.
Therapy - treatment

3. Plasma

5. History
• History suggests that it is not the first time this therapy has been
used.
• Health care workers throughout many generations have been
experimenting with the use of convalescent plasma to treat
measles, mumps, polio, and influenza.
• In addition to the deadly pandemic “Spanish Flu” that spread
through 1918 which killed more peoples than World War I had also
seen the use of CPT as a treatment.
• It was noted to be effective to reduce the death rate to half when
infected people with measles were treated with blood plasma at
the initial stage of infection.
• Furthermore, pandemics of the 21st century such as MERS, SARS,
and Ebola has also been tested with the use of CPT but with little
success.

6. How CPT works?
• is simply the administration of blood plasma of patients
who have recovered from infection.
• a person infected with COVID-19 naturally generates
antibodies against the virus in their blood, which makes
their blood equivalent to drugs against the same infection.

7. How it works…
• When a human body is exposed to a foreign pathogen, it produces
antibodies in response.
• Antibodies are proteins that the body uses to fight off infections.
• These antibodies are contained in the plasma.
• Once an individual has recovered from a virus, the antibodies
continue to remain in the plasma for a certain period, prepared to
fight the virus if it returns.
• Antibodies of one individual, however, can be employed to fight the
virus for other people.
• Doctors hence extract convalescent plasma from a recovered
individual and transfuse into another person battling with the virus.
• This means, the person with the virus will have antibodies in the
immune system long before it produces its own response to the
virus.

8. CPT….
• It’s a ray of hope in the current crisis.
• It is a passive immunization which means it does not last lifelong as compared to
vaccines which on the contrary are active immunization.
• When an individual develops his or her own antibodies, for example through a
vaccine, it is called “active immunity”, but when the person “borrows” them from
another person via convalescent plasma, it is called passive.

9. • Doctors around the world are experimenting with
convalescent plasma therapy in moderate to
critical Covid-19 patients.
• Some success has been reported, but the medical
community is yet to say conclusively that it is an
effective treatment for Covid-19.