Seoul (AFP)
Two elderly South Korean patients with coronavirus have recovered from severe pneumonia after being treated with plasma from patients cured of the disease, researchers said on Tuesday.
One of the avenues identified by scientists to treat patients affected by Covid-19 is to inject them with the plasma of patients who have overcome the disease, which contains potentially beneficial antibodies.
Plasma therapy could be "an alternative treatment for critically ill patients who do not respond favorably to antiviral drugs," said Choi Jun-yong, a doctor and researcher at Severance Hospital in Seoul, where the two are being treated. .
But large-scale clinical trials are needed to demonstrate its effectiveness, he added.
One of the two patients is a 71-year-old man whose condition improved after receiving antibodies from a 20-year-old patient healed with steroids.
The state of health of the other, a 67-year-old woman, had not initially improved by taking drugs, in particular against malaria, and oxygen.
Kwon Jun-wook of the Seoul Center for Disease Control said the plasma treatment was "important" since there is currently no Covid-19 drug or vaccine available.
Plasma therapy has already shown its effectiveness, in small-scale trials, against other infectious diseases, such as Ebola or SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome).
A study on sixty patients is currently underway in Parisian hospitals. Trials are also being carried out in the United States and China.
Since its onset in December in China, the pandemic has claimed nearly 75,000 lives worldwide.
© 2020 AFP