(Image source from: hindustantimes.com)

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is not in favor of indiscriminate use of convalescent plasma therapy (CPT) against the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) even though the number of cases across the country has reached 8.9 million mark.

An open-label phase II multicentre randomised controlled trial (PLACID trial)was conducted by a top medical body around 39 public and private hospitals on the use of CPT in the management of cases with moderate Covid-19 infection.

This therapy takes plasma from people who have recovered from the infection in order to improve the immune response of those fighting the virus.

The study concluded 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 said.

As per the top medical body, PLACID is one of the world’s largest trial on CPT conducted in 464 moderately ill confirmed Covid-19 affected adults and they didn’t see it beneficial in any way.

This ICMR’S statement shows that there are 8,912,907 confirmed cases of the viral infection. Of them 446,805 are active cases, 8,335,109 have recovered and 130,993 fatalities have been recorded.

At the New Delhi’s All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the doctors advised agents against the overuse of experimental therapies.

Dr Manish Soneja, an additional professor from AIIMS’ department of medicine, stated that randomised control trials were not of use and they did not show benefits of anti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine, Remdesivir, or convalescent plasma therapy.

In October, even ICMR published the same in the British Medical Journal and they didn’t find the cpt beneficial for covid-19 patients.

Even in China and Netherlands, similar studies have been conducted and CPT hasn’t shown any clinical outcomes on the hospitalised Covid-19 patients.

By Neha Makhija