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. 2021 Mar 8;13(3):436.
doi: 10.3390/v13030436.

Early Administration of Convalescent Plasma Improves Survival in Patients with Hematological Malignancies and COVID-19

Monika Maria Biernat  1 , Anna Kolasińska  1 , Jacek Kwiatkowski  1 , Donata Urbaniak-Kujda  1 , Paweł Biernat  2 , Justyna Janocha-Litwin  3 , Małgorzata Szymczyk-Nużka  4 , Dawid Bursy  2 , Elżbieta Kalicińska  1 , Krzysztof Simon  3 , Grzegorz Mazur  5 , Tomasz Wróbel  1
Affiliations

Early Administration of Convalescent Plasma Improves Survival in Patients with Hematological Malignancies and COVID-19

Monika Maria Biernat et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

The use of convalescent plasma in the treatment of COVID-19 may lead to a milder course of infection and has been associated with improved outcomes. Determining optimal treatments in high risk populations is crucial, as is the case in those with hematological malignancies. We analyzed a cohort of 23 patients with hematological malignancies and COVID-19 who had received plasma 48-72 h after the diagnosis of infection and compared it with a historical group of 22 patients who received other therapy. Overall survival in those who received convalescent plasma was significantly higher than in the historical group (p = 0.03460). The plasma-treated group also showed a significantly milder course of infection (p = 0.03807), characterized by less severe symptoms and faster recovery (p = 0.00001). In conclusion, we have demonstrated that convalescent plasma is an effective treatment and its early administration leads to clinical improvement, increased viral clearance and longer overall survival in patients with hematological malignancies and COVID-19. To our knowledge, this is the first report to analyze the efficacy of convalescent plasma in a cohort of patients with hematological malignancies.

Keywords: COVID-19; convalescent plasma; hematological malignancies.

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Conflict of interest statement

K.S. received consultancy honoraria, speaker fees, or research support from Roche, Gilead, Bayer, Abbvie, Intercept, Tobira, GSK, Janssen, MSD, BMS and Pfizer outside the submitted work. The remaining authors declare no competing financial interests. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Kaplan–Meier analysis of hematological patients with COVID-19 who received convalescent plasma compared with patients from a historical group treated with other therapy (remdesivir, tocilizumab, hydroxychloroquine, lopinavir/ritonavir). Hazard ratio (HR) and 95% CI are calculated from a Cox model without covariates.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The PCA analysis presented in the pca1 vs. pca2 load diagram. Analysis of the effect of applied early plasma therapy on the course of COVID-19 in hematological patients using generalized principal component analysis PCA. The PCA model was estimated using the NIPALS iterative algorithm, the convergence criterion was set at the level of 0.00001, setting the maximum number of iterations at 50. The number of components was determined by determining the maximum predictive capability Q^2 using the V-fold cross-validation method, setting the maximum number of components at the level of V_max = 7. The obtained optimal PCA model was finally reduced to 2 components.
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