Older, Male Patients Who Had More Severe COVID-19 May Be Best Donors for Convalescent Plasma Therapy

Sex, age, and severity of disease may be useful in identifying COVID-19 survivors who are likely to have high levels of antibodies that can protect against the disease, according to a new study co-led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings suggest that older males who have recovered from COVID-19 after having been hospitalized are strong candidates for donating plasma for treating COVID-19 patients. Doctors have been using infusions of plasma--the part of blood that contains antibodies--from recovered COVID-19 patients to treat COVID-19 patients and also as a possible prophylaxis to prevent COVID-19. Doctors have used convalescent plasma to treat patients or immunize persons at high risk of virus exposure during outbreaks of measles, mumps, polio, Ebola, and even the 1918 pandemic flu. Clinical trials of convalescent plasma treatment against COVID-19 are ongoing, and doctors until now haven't had guidance for selecting COVID-19 survivors who are likeliest to have strong antibody responses. "We propose that sex, age, and severity of disease should be used to guide the selection of donors for convalescent plasma transfer studies because we found that these were significant patient characteristics that not only predicted the amount of antibody but the quality of that antibody," says study lead author Sabra Klein, PhD, Professor in the Bloomberg School's Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology.