CPT is simply known as plasma therapy for the treatment of coronavirus virus infection. Most of them have in news that many states have given permission of using this plasma therapy for infected patients.
Medical terminology convalescent is used for the person recovered from any type of illness or any infection.
Plasma is an important portion of our blood. Our blood is red in color because of the presence of hemoglobin protein. This hemoglobin is present in RBC’s that gives the blood-red color. But, apart from the hemoglobin and other cellular components, plasma presents another important portion of blood. It is responsible for maintaining the pH in the blood. It contains many different types of proteins, among these, important ones are antibodies denoted by (Ab).
Antibodies are a special types of defense proteins produced by our immune system against any foreign particle or antigen (Ag).
Antigens are protein, DNA or any other cellular part of any pathogen or foreign invader such as virus, bacteria or protozoa. When the pathogen enters in to our body, our immune system generates specific proteins Ab to fight against foreign invader Ag.
When the person is infected with COVID-19, the immune system generates antigens against the novel virus. Normaly immune system generates antibodies span of 10-15 days after the onset of infection. Mainly, immune system generates two types of antibodies: IgM and IgG. Antibodies are also called immunoglobulin. To strengthen the defense system of patient, immune system primarily generates IgM and secondarily generates IgG antibodies.
These two types are important for coronavirus. Once they are produced within body, the patient start feeling well, because both of these antibodies are invading on antigen COVID-19. After some days the patient will completely regains his health. Ab’s are continuously produced by the cells even after the patient get recovered from infection.
“Immune” is the terminology used for those patients who recovered from infection. It means that, their body is immune now, because of the production of natural antibodies against antigen. So, if the same virus affects the same person in future then the patient will recover in 2-3 days without showing any symptoms of infection.
Patients who recovered from infection are taken as donor for plasma therapy. It means that, these patients will donate their antibodies to someone still infected. So, the person who donates antibody will become donor and one who receives antibodies becomes recipient. It’s not like blood transfusion process. For blood transfusion, a match of blood group of donor and recipient is necessary; otherwise, transfusion can become lethal for recipient.
To avoid blood transfusion process and to save patients life, doctors can extract antibodies directly from blood plasma regardless of blood group of donor. For this purpose, they separate the donor’s blood cells and then separate the blood plasma containing both IgM and IgG antibodies. After doing that, they transfers the antibodies containing plasma to recipient—an infected patient—who needs it. This makes patient capable to fight against infection. This is also called the “passive immunization process”. It makes the person to easily recover from infection within 1-2 weeks.
We can produce these same proteins artificially by checking the sequence and examining that how these proteins looks like. This is can be done by the help of monoclonal production and hybridoma technology. But, again this is time taking process.
So, we have to wait and pray for our soldiers who are fighting on the front line against this lethal infection until the production of artificial antibodies.
Related Article: Is Blood Plasma The Cure For COVID-19?
by: Hira Gull
Tags: Convalescent Plasma Therapy For COVID-19
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.