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On February 25, the National Institutes of Health halted a clinical trial testing the use of convalescent plasma in non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients after an independent advisory board declared the treatment was no better than placebo at preventing severe disease or death.
“Even if enrollment continued, the trial was highly unlikely to demonstrate that convalescent plasma prevents progression from mild to severe disease,” says Simone Glynn, an epidemiologist at the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), which led the study. Data underlying the decision to stop the trial are not yet available, Glynn notes, because patients are being followed for up to 30 days after participating in the trial.
The cessation of the trial is the latest blow to an intervention that had been considered promising for preventing progression from mild to severe COVID-19 in people who contract the virus.
The principle behind infusing antibody-rich ...
