Coronavirus may be safely treated with recovered patients' plasma, study shows

A not-yet-peer-reviewed study seems to pave the way for treating coronavirus with plasma from recovered patients.

With no treatments approved for treating COVID-19 yet, doctors around the country have been trying a variety of drugs and therapies in hopes of finding something promising and further studying it. One of those experimental treatments, known as convalescent plasma transfusions, appears to be safe and could be a worthwhile treatment after it's studied more, an unreviewed study published Thursday on a public server called Medrxiv suggests.

Researchers at the Mayo Clinic, Michigan State University, and Johns Hopkins University, looked at 5,000 coronavirus patients around the country who received convalescent plasma transfusions from recovered patients, The Wall Street Journal notes via the study. Under one percent of the treated patients saw "serious adverse effects" after the transfusions, and there was a 14.9 percent mortality rate seven days after transfusions. Two-thirds of these patients were critically ill to begin with, so "the mortality rate does not appear excessive," the study said.

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While this study doesn't determine whether convalescent transfusions effectively treat coronavirus, it does suggest they are safe for wider research. This study will need to be peer reviewed and replicated in official medical journals before it can be considered an approved way of treating COVID-19. The Food and Drug Administration did approve the "compassionate use" of convalescent plasma treatments in emergency situations as part of its attempts to find an effective therapy.