Effectiveness and Safety of Convalescent Plasma Therapy on COVID-19 Patients With Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome

Corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been declared as a Pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO). According to WHO report on March 31st 2020, globally COVID-19 have infected over 750,000 people and caused over 36,000 deaths with case fatality rate of 4.85%. In Indonesia, COVID-19 have infected 1,414 people and caused 122 deaths with case fatality rate of 8.63%. In severe cases, COVID-19 causes complications, such as acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), sepsis, septic shock, and multi-organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS), where age and comorbid illnesses as a major factor to these complications. Up to this point there are several promising therapies for COVID-19 but is not yet recommended and in need of further research. The use of convalescent plasma has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) through the scheme of emergency investigational new drug (eIND). This method has been used as the treatment in several outbreak or plague cases over the years, such as the flu epidemic in 1918, polio, measles, mumps, SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), EVD (Ebola virus disease) and MERS (middle-eastern respiratory syndrome) and this treatment shows better outcome. Several case report on the use of convalescent plasma for COVID-19 patients with ARDS and mechanical ventilation has been reported and shows promising outcome. Nevertheless, larger and multicenter research need to be done to assess and evaluate the effectiveness and safety of convalescent plasma therapy on for COVID-19 patients with ARDS.