One KY man’s plasma may have saved two lives from COVID-19. Now doctors want more.
It sounds like a movie and some day, it might even turn into one, the saga of a team of doctors using a 100-year old treatment in a race to save patients dying of COVID-19.
Now the team at Baptist Health Lexington who first used plasma from a recovered patient to treat sick ones in Kentucky, wants to expand the practice. They’re looking for more donors, but it’s tricky because they have to be two weeks out from being both negative and showing any symptoms.
“We didn’t have too many patients who are two to four weeks out from COVID-19 but now those patients are starting to call, and say ‘I tested positive, how can I help?’” said Firas Badin, the Baptist Health oncologist/hematologist who worked on the plasma treatment.
Baptist Health is working with University of Kentucky HealthCare and the Kentucky Blood Center on getting more donors.
Badin worked with Mark Dougherty, the head of Baptist Health’s infectious disease team. In late March, Dougherty was helping treat two critically ill patients at Baptist. COVID-19, along with its other terrible symptoms, affects the body’s immune system to such a degree that it starts attacking organ systems. Doughterty described it as a “deranged immune response,” that shuts down kidneys, lungs and other functions.
So on Tuesday, March 24, the FDA released emergency compassionate protocol allowing doctors to use plasma from recovered patients, a process used in 1918 with the Spanish flu, and in other pandemics since then.
“By Wednesday or Thursday, we were trying to figure out how we would implement something like that,” Dougherty said. On Friday, he recruited Badin to get in touch with the blood bank, and by 5 p.m. that day they received emergency approval from the FDA and the hospital’s own Institution Review Board, which oversees research.
They had checked in with a group of doctors who’d treated the original epicenter of positive patients in Harrison County. Harrison Memorial Hospital contacted Ray Young, who attended church with the first group of identified patients. Young told WKYT that he had never had symptoms, but had tested positive on March 12. By March 28, he tested negative, and on Saturday, the Kentucky Blood Center brought in personnel to take his plasma.
“You know my hope is those folks that got that infusion that it helped them, that’s the only thing I want is that they are going to be able to go home to their families, “ Young told WKYT.
By Sunday night, Dougherty and Badin administered the plasma to the two patients. They are still sick, but improving, Dougherty said, and he’s cautiously optimistic.
Baptist Health has now shared the protocol with all the major hospitals in Lexington, and with colleagues across the country. “This will be a national effort and we wanted to show this is something we can do, we can intervene with therapeutics.”
The earliest patients represent the biggest change for convalescent plasma. One donor can cover the needs of two COVID-19 patients.
“So we will probably see the most donors a few months from now,” said Dr. Dennis Williams, the medical director of the Kentucky Blood Center, which has now set up a donor registry. It’s tough to find people who both test negative and have no further symptoms two weeks out.
Also, because Kentucky has had such limited testing, it’s hard to find people like Young, the asymptomatic patients who still make the antibodies to the virus. Now Kentucky is scheduled to receive some new testing equipment, which will help in affected and vulnerable areas, such as nursing homes, and help more potential plasma donors.
“Fortunately here in Central Kentucky, we’ve dampened the curve so we haven’t been overwhelmed,” Dougherty said. “When I step back, there’s been a sense of helplessness and hopelessness that we would get overwhelmed ... but we’re not helpless or hopeless, there are things we can do to intervene. We will get over this.”
If you are a recovered COVID-19 patient and wish to donate plasma, call Baptist Health at (859) 260-6440 or go to the Kentucky Blood Center at https://kybloodcenter.org/convalescent-plasma-donation.
This story was originally published April 10, 2020 at 2:42 PM.
