Evaluation of the therapeutic effect of the plasma of recovered COVID-19 patients for treating the patients admitted to the intensive care unit

The novel coronavirus has infected about 141 million people around the world. So far, about 80.4 million people have been discharged, and nearly 3.01 million people have died (an estimated mortality rate of 2.13%). The study aimed to investigate the effect of plasma therapy from recovered COVID-19 patients to treat the patients hospitalized in the intensive care unit (ICU) of the Shahid Mostafa Khomeini Hospital of Ilam in 2020. The present prospective study was conducted in 2019-2020. Overall, 57 cases of plasma therapy were analysed using the Cox proportional hazard regression model in STATA 12 software. The results showed in patients receiving plasma treatment, the hazard ratio was (HR = 0.68, 95% CI, 0.45-1.04), indicating a 32% lower risk of death in the COVID-19 patients who received plasma therapy compared to those who did not. However, this relationship does not reach statistical significance (p = 0.07). Plasma therapy seems to yield some efficacy among patients with severe COVID-19 and those who have no underlying diseases. It is recommended to be used in combination with pharmaceutical interventions, for example, Actemra, to assess its therapeutic efficiency. (c) 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd.