WSJ: plasma treatment reduced covid death rates by 50%

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I'm sure plasma will be banned now

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It's pronounced Plaws-Ma

Like Yo-se-might

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The WSJ is a peer reviewed journal now?

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The WSJ is a peer reviewed journal now?

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By Amy Dockser Marcus

August 04, 2020 10:26 p.m. EDT

Hos­pi­tal­ized Covid-19 pa­tients who re­ceived trans­fu­sions of blood plasma rich with an­ti­bod­ies from re­cov­ered pa­tients re­duced their mor­tal­ity rate by about 50%, ac­cord­ing to re­searchers run­ning a large na­tional study.

The re­searchers pre­sented their data analy­sis Sat­ur­day in a we­bi­nar for physi­cians in­ter­ested in learn­ing about so-called con­va­les­cent plasma, with data slides that were re­viewed by The Wall Street Jour­nal. The re­searchers said they saw signs that the treat­ment might be work­ing in pa­tients who re­ceived high lev­els of an­ti­bod­ies in plasma early in the course of their ill­ness. They based their con­clu­sions on an analy­sis of about 3,000 pa­tients.

Pa­tients who at three days or less af­ter di­ag­no­sis re­ceived plasma con­tain­ing high lev­els of an­ti­bod­ies against the coro­n­avirus had a mor­tal­ity rate of 6.6% at seven days af­ter the trans­fu­sion. That com­pared with a mor­tal­ity rate of 13.3% for pa­tients who got plasma with low lev­els of an­ti­bod­ies at four days or more af­ter di­ag­no­sis. That in­di­cates re­duced mor­tal­ity of about 50%, the re­searchers said. At 30 days af­ter trans­fu­sion, the mor­tal­ity rate was re­duced by about 36%, in­ves­ti­ga­tors re­ported.

The shar­ing of the data comes as the Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion is near­ing a de­ci­sion to au­tho­rize emer­gency use of con­va­les­cent plasma for treat­ing peo­ple in­fected with the coro­n­avirus. The FDA can’t com­ment on whether it would take such ac­tion, a spokes-woman said.

The data were sub­mit­ted to the FDA, which is spon­sor­ing an ex­panded-ac­cess pro­gram led by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. The Mayo Clinic or­ga­nized the we­bi­nar.

The data haven’t been pub­lished in a jour­nal or sub­ject to peer re­view. At the we­bi­nar pre­sen­ta­tion, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said the con­clu­sions are their own and don’t rep­re­sent an of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment en­dorse­ment of ef­fi­cacy of con­va­les­cent plasma.

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Four for­mer heads of the FDA wrote an opin­ion piece in the Wash­ing­ton Post ear­lier this week stat­ing that al­though con­va­les­cent plasma is a promis­ing treat­ment and many pa­tients have been treated with it, is­sues re­main about when and how to use it and “we are not much closer to de­fin­i­tively an­swer­ing those ques­tions.”

“Con­va­les­cent plasma is not avail­able in un­lim­ited sup­ply. Pa­tients who get it are se­lected for some rea­son. Lots of those rea­sons can also af­fect pa­tient out­comes,” said Mark Mc­Clel­lan, for­mer head of the FDA and one of the au­thors of the opin­ion piece.

“There are many ex­am­ples of ob­ser­va­tional stud­ies no mat­ter how well done that got an­swers that were wrong when ran­dom­ized tri­als were done,” said Dr. Mc­Clel­lan, di­rec­tor of the Mar­go­lis Cen­ter for Health Pol­icy at Duke Uni­ver­sity.

Ran­dom­ized con­trolled clin­i­cal tri­als of con­va­les­cent plasma ther­apy are un­der way, in­clud­ing sev­eral stud­ies ex­am­in­ing its po­ten­tial ef­fec­tive­ness in out­pa­tient clin­ics. At present, only hos­pi­tal­ized pa­tients have ac­cess to con­va­les­cent plasma.

Don­ald Berry, a pro­fes­sor in the de­part­ment of bio­sta­tis­tics at the Uni­ver­sity of Texas MD An­der­son Can­cer Cen­ter, who isn’t in­volved in the con­va­les­cent plasma study and re­viewed the slides at the Jour­nal’s re­quest, said the data are promis­ing.

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Yet another that, unfortunately, heard the term "peer reviewed" but doesn't understand what it means at all.

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The data haven’t been pub­lished in a jour­nal or sub­ject to peer re­view. At the we­bi­nar pre­sen­ta­tion, in­ves­ti­ga­tors said the con­clu­sions are their own and don’t rep­re­sent an of­fi­cial gov­ern­ment en­dorse­ment of ef­fi­cacy of con­va­les­cent plasma.

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Stop acting like you are smart

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Raw data is meaningless without statistical analysis

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