Calexico native part of national COVID study
BOISE, Idaho – A Calexico native is among a group of hundreds of physicians across the country who are engaged in research attempting to determine whether blood plasma from recently recovered COVID-19 patients can aid in recovery or prevention of the illness.
Dr. Richard Miranda, a hematologist and oncologist at Saint Alphonsus Regional Medical Center here and a 1974 graduate of Calexico High School, is leading that hospital’s participation in the National COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Project.
The project consists of physicians and scientists from 57 institutions in 46 states who have self-organized for the purpose of investigating the use of convalescent plasma in the current COVID-19 pandemic. The leadership group represents some of the leading medical research institutions in the United States, including Michigan State University, Mayo Clinic School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mount Sinai School of Medicine and Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
On Thursday, Miranda supervised the hospital’s first transfusion of plasma donated by a person who recovered from the virus into a critically ill patient. The hope is that the antibodies within the donated plasma will fight the virus in the infected patient, thus increasing the chance for recovery and survival.
“This type of therapy is available now, instead of waiting months for a vaccine,” Miranda said. “Our hope is to be able to administer this plasma to a patient who is in our COVID unit, before the disease progresses to respiratory failure and the patient needs to be on a ventilator in intensive care.”
Miranda said similar plasma antibody therapies were used to treat other viruses, including the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918, SARS in 2003, H1N1 in 2009, and MERS in 2012.
Miranda acknowledged there are still a number of uncertainties surrounding the work. The U.S. Food and
Drug Administration approved the research in early April under an expanded access, compassionate use exemption permitted for patients with life-threatening illnesses for which there are no approved treatment and who unable to participate in regular clinical trials. What this means is there is no control group in the study against which to compare results.
Also, because the patients in the study are already critically ill, it’s unknown whether the therapy would be more effective if administered earlier in the disease’s progression.
Consequently, the results have been “all over the place” so far, Miranda said.
More controlled clinical studies are underway, he said. In the meantime, plasma therapy, even with its unknowns, offers significant potential benefit with minimal risk, he said.
The plasma therapy is coordinated with the American Red Cross of Idaho, which acquires, screens and types the plasma from appropriate donors. Saint Alphonsus and other healthcare providers in the Boise region are actively reaching out to recovered COVID-19 patients, encouraging them to contact the Red Cross and donate plasma for this potentially life-saving treatment.
Miranda stressed the need for patients who have tested positive and recovered from the COVID-19 virus to donate. He said the number of patients who might benefit from the therapy far exceeds the available plasma. One donation of plasma may treat two to three patients.
Miranda will be reporting the transfusion results to the Mayo Clinic Research Department, which is conducting clinical trials. There are currently multiple FDA-approved clinical trials on the use of Convalescent Plasma Therapy.
Miranda and the Saint Alphonsus Research team hope to participate in several of these national trials, including studies by John Hopkins University, Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles and the VIRUS Discovery Registry supported by the Society of Critical Care Medicine.