Coronavirus Treatment: Passive Immunization Can Decelerate SARS-CoV-2, Boost Immunity Until There's A Vaccine

Antibodies from recovered COVID-19 patients have been life-saving for other acute infections and should be explored to treat COVID-19 until there is a vaccine, according to a recent study.

The pandemic has affected over 4 million people worldwide and taken the lives of over 280,000 individuals. Finding a potential vaccine is the need of the hour but it might take a really long time. Experts estimate that the vaccine should be available in the next 12 to 18 months. A potential interim situation reported in the study published in the International Journal fo Risk & Safety in Medicine suggested that a passive vaccine or passive immunization might be an effective short-term fortification against infectious agents.

"Using valuable plasma from recovered patients might be useful in our global war against COVID-19," MedicalXpress quoted the study author Foad Alzoughool, Ph.D. as saying. He and his colleagues have studied the application of passive immunization in previous pandemics and opine that this approach might be a potential solution to address the immediate health threat of COVID-19.

After being exposed to a viral infection, a person’s body produces antibodies to ward off the virus. Those antibodies present in the blood of a recovered patient could be collected and used as convalescent plasma and transferred to the blood of a person who is newly infected with the same pathogen. The plasma can neutralize the pathogen and eliminate it from the person’s bloodstream and help boost immunity.

While passive immunization doesn’t offer long-term protection against the virus, it can reduce the aggressiveness as well as the fatality of an infection.

Passive immunization has been used ever since the twentieth century during the previous pandemic caused by the Spanish flu. The patients who were administered convalescent plasma serum had lower mortality rates compared to those who didn’t.

Passive immunization has also experimented during outbreaks of Ebola virus, the H1N1 flu as well as the chikungunya virus. This shows the potential of using this method in the prevention and treatment of viral infections.

Results of passive immunizations from different studies:

• When introduced soon after the onset of symptoms, the passive immunization technique was effective in treating the SARS-CoV epidemic in Guandong, China, and the MERS-CoV in Saudi Arabia.
• Individuals who were administered convalescent plasma had a significantly shorter hospital stay and lower mortality rates.
• Patients who received passive immunization before day 14 of illness had a higher discharge rate.
• Healthcare workers who were infected with SARS-CoV and failed to respond to treatment, survived after receiving convalescent plasma.

“If you are looking for COVID-19 treatment, you will find it in the blood of survivors. In a time when no registered antiviral drug or vaccine is available, PI might help in slowing down the deadly virus and save lives, particularly for the elderly and patients with pre-existing conditions,” MedicalXpress quoted the study’s co-author Lo'ai Alanagreh, Ph.D. as saying.