Passive antibody therapy
The method of the century before last can help in the fight against the spread of coronavirus
Polina Gershberg, Naked Science
Passive antibody therapy was used at the end of the century before last, and in the twentieth century helped to stop outbreaks of diseases such as measles and polio. The run-in method can be used today, at least, this is assumed by scientists from Johns Hopkins University.
The article by Casadevall and Pirofski The convalescent sera option for containing COVID-19 is published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Antibodies to SARS-Cov-2 (the causative agent of the current pandemic), available in the blood serum of patients who have recently had this coronavirus, can then be injected into other people. This is not vaccination, and such a measure will not prevent diseases for a long time, but it will provide short-term protection to those who have not yet been ill.
The researchers note that, given the large number of those who have already recovered, it is not difficult to get antibodies today. A good knowledge of the method itself will allow you to quickly deploy a system of assistance, whereas many protection methods currently being developed require quite long checks. "The deployment of this option does not require research or development," says immunologist Arturo Casadevall. "It can be deployed within a few weeks, as it relies on the standard practice of blood banks."
If antibodies are extracted and processed, they can be injected primarily to people from risk groups, uninfected family members of an infected patient, or to strengthen the immunity of medical workers fighting on the frontline of the coronavirus front and exposed to constant exposure to pathogens.
The researchers note that the passive administration of such antibodies is the only means of providing immediate immunity to susceptible people. They can, depending on the amount and composition of the injected antibody preparation, protect from several weeks to several months. It is worth pointing out that the infection of health workers is one of the key problems in the epicenters of the disease: there are not enough of them, even if everyone is healthy, and every sick doctor or nurse is the lost lives of patients.
Against this background, the team suggests using a convalescent serum as an emergency response. Similar measures have been used against other coronavirus diseases, including SARS1 and MERS. Of course, Covid-19, being a pandemic, has a much larger scale, but this sad fact will partly even help in creating stocks of convalescent serums, since there will be a much larger number of patients who have had coronavirus.
This is not a panacea, however, scientists note that, coupled with quarantine measures and efforts to improve the level of personal hygiene, the method can help smooth the curve of the increase in the number of cases: this, in turn, will help healthcare systems not to drown in the flow of patients and not to lose patients due to a one-time shortage of personnel and equipment.
However, there are still many unknowns in the case, including how much of such a serum is needed for effective protection. According to unconfirmed data to date, similar therapy has already been started in China. The very fact of the formation of antibodies in those who have been ill has been confirmed. In particular, Alexander Lukashev, director of the Institute of Medical Parasitology of Tropical and Vector-borne Diseases, told RIA Novosti about the formation of relatively long-term immunity.
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