ICMR’s advisory for plasma therapy for Covid-19 patients reveals indiscriminate usage not recommended

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) revealed on Wednesday an alarming update about treatment against Covid-19, stating that the indiscriminate usage of convalescent plasma therapy (CPT) for treating the Coronavirus disease was not recommended, though considering the present scenario of the country, with over 8.9 million cases.

An open label phase – II multicentre randomised controlled trial (PLACID-trial) was initiated by the top medical body over 39 public and private hospitals with the use of CPT in the country for managing the increasing cases of Covid-19 infection. CPT is a therapy which utilizes the plasma from the recovered people of Covid-19 infection for generating an immune response for fighting the deadly infection.

ICMR stated the study’s conclusion that the therapy “did not lead to a reduction in progression to severe Covid-19 or all-cause mortality in the group that received CPT as compared to the group that did not receive CPT”

ICMR further added PLACID is the largest trial based on utilizing CPT which was conducted on 464 moderately ill patients but no intricate benefit was discovered. Presently, there are 8, 912, 907 confirmed cases of the Covid-19 infection, from which, 8, 335,109 have already recovered and from 446,805 are active cases and a total of 130,993 death count has been reported. 

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