Can antibody testing bring the virus to its knees?
Grand River Hospital and St. Mary’s General Hospital COVID-19 patients to get antibody-rich plasma
WATERLOO REGION — Blood plasma from COVID-19 survivors, potentially containing life-saving antibodies, will be used to treat patients still battling the virus at Grand River Hospital and St. Mary’s General Hospital.
The two hospitals are participating in a Canada-wide study on antibody testing.
When it comes to combating the killer coronavirus, antibody testing could be the key to stopping the deadly disease.
Not only could it save the lives of those who are in hospitals on oxygen and on the brink of needing ventilation, it could also help figure out which front-line workers are at low risk of getting the virus and allow them to keep working, said Dr. Donald Arnold, who is leading the national study.
Most importantly, antibody testing could paint a picture of how many people have been infected and guide governments in deciding how long to keep us in shutdown mode and when to reopen businesses and workplaces.
“We just need the information to see if this works or not,” said Arnold, a Hamilton hematologist, who is also the director of the McMaster Centre for Transfusion Research and an associate professor of medicine at McMaster University. “Once a person has COVID infection and they get better, they have developed protective antibodies and helped their
own body fight off the infection and presumably they are immune,” he said.
“Those antibodies are the reason they got better in the first place.”
The study will involve 1,000 patients and about 50 hospitals, overseen by various doctors at universities, including McMaster, University of Toronto and the University of Montreal.
“Everyone feels the urgency and the need and their hearts are into it,” Arnold said.
Arnold said the experimental project was put together quickly. It started with 40 hospitals but others wanted to participate and it’s now at 50, including four hospitals in New York City.
“There has been a lot of interest right across the country.
It’s been phenomenal,” he said.
“The last four weeks have been a complete frenzy to get this going,” said Arnold, who met with other doctors and scientists and started a research plan over a Zoom meeting at the end of March.
The first plasma was collected from donors at the end of April and the treatment could begin as early as this week.
“There are only so many collections we can do in a day, whereas the demand will be high right away,” he said.
The experimental treatment involves injecting antibodyrich plasma from recovered patients, known as convalescent plasma, into those who are still infected.
The study looks at making the antibodies a therapeutic treatment to those still fighting COVID-19.
Arnold said about two-thirds of patients will get the antibody-rich plasma and one third will get regular care so that scientists can compare their results and see how successful antibodies are in treating those with COVID-19.
Using plasma for those who have been sick has been used before with some success in treating other viral diseases such as SARS, H1N1 and Ebola.
Arnold said if the antibody testing works, there will be a need to screen people in the community or people who have been infected to see if they have protective immunity.
“I anticipate it will become very important,” he said.
If the testing results are found to be positive, researchers will need to know how long the protective antibody lasts, whether it’s six months or a year, he said.
“Lots of these questions we don’t have an answer to,” he said.
Waterloo Region’s acting medical officer of health Dr.
Hsiu-Li Wang said the region doesn’t currently have the expertise or capacity to lead an antibody study but she said she is eager to see antibody testing done to get a better understanding of how widespread the virus is in the community because current virus testing is mostly limited to front-line workers and vulnerable groups such as the elderly.
But some scientists have cautioned that the presence of antibodies does not mean protection from the virus or protection from a second wave.
Narveen Jandu, associate professor at the University of Waterloo and a cellular microbiologist, said antibody testing is important but tests are not 100 per cent accurate.
“Antibodies are created by our immune response in response to infections,” she said. Some people have a strong response, others not so robust.
“We all know someone in our lives who has one cold after another and others who never get sick,” she said. “They have an inherently strong immune system.”
Jandu said the amount of virus one has also plays a factor. Some will have a higher ‘viral load’, the virus particles that infect people; and for others with underlying health issues, the virus could multiply and replicate.
The biomedical community is mixed and many urge caution in using antibody testing. It doesn’t show how long someone has had the infection, whether it occurred a month or a day ago, or the severity of the infection.
“We don’t want a false sense of security or these results to be interpreted as an immunity certificate,” she said.