Treating hospitalized COVID-19 patients who also have cancer with convalescent plasma (CCP) was associated with improved survival rates and reduced time to discharge compared with standard of care, according to findings published recently in Nature Cancer.
In this randomized, open-label, multicenter trial, a team of investigators in Germany compared outcomes between standard of care treatment and standard of care treatment plus CCP among hospitalized patients with severe COVID-19 within four risk groups: patients with cancer (56), patients with immunosuppression (16), patients with laboratory-based risk factors (36) and patients with advanced age (26). The primary endpoint was clinical improvement that was assessed using a seven-point ordinal scale.
Overall, there was no difference in the median time from randomization to improvement 12.5 (10-17) days versus 18 (11-28) days. However, in pre-specified subgroup analyses only patients with cancer improved clinically compared with those in the control arm. Patients with cancer experienced a shortened median time to improvement (median of 13 days versus 31 days, HR = 2.50; p=0.003) and superior survival (HR = 0.28) with plasma treatment versus the control arm. Furthermore, among patients with cancer, neutralizing antibody activity increased in the plasma cohort but not in the control cohort. According to investigators, this “further supports the restriction of the beneficial effects of plasma to patients with limited ability to react to the antigen with a humoral response.”
Additionally, the investigators noted that patients in the trial were randomized and treated on average within 7 days of symptom onset. They concluded that even earlier intervention with CCP might further increase its efficacy in patients with cancer.
