Treatment with convalescent plasma vastly improved the survival rate of patients hospitalized for COVID-19 who also had hematologic malignancies that compromise the immune system, according to new data released by the COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium (CCC19). Convalescent plasma is an experimental treatment using plasma donated from a COVID-19 survivor to bolster the patient’s ability to “fight” the COVID-19 infection.
Patients who received convalescent plasma from donors who had recovered from COVID-19 had a death rate of 13.3% compared to 24.8% for those who did not receive it.
The difference was more striking in patients admitted to intensive care units, where patients treated with convalescent plasma had a death rate of 15.8% compared to 46.9% for those who didn’t receive the treatment.
The researchers released the study’s findings ahead of publication in a peer-reviewed medical journal because of its potential clinical implications and the urgency of sharing information about effective COVID-19 treatments.
“Given that patients with hematologic malignancies have consistently higher mortality rates from COVID-19, we suspect our findings, along with other similar cases, support the biological plausibility of using convalescent plasma to improve survival in patients with hematologic cancers,” said the study’s lead author, Michael Thompson, MD, PhD, an oncologist and hematologist with Advocate Aurora Health and Advocate Aurora Research Institute. “Further research will study these hypothesis-generating data and will likely change treatment practice.”
Jeffrey Henderson, MD, PhD, associate professor of Medicine and Molecular Microbiology at Washington University, contributed equally as a lead author of the study.
The study compared the 30-day mortality of hospitalized adults with both a hematologic malignancy and a COVID-19 diagnosis from 71 medical centers across North and South America that participate in the international CCC19 consortium. The analysis was conducted on 143 patients who received convalescent plasma and 823 who did not.
Hematologic malignancies, such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia and multiple myeloma, are associated with defects in immunity, which can be exacerbated with treatments for the cancers, putting patients with these blood cancers at additional risk for infections and infectious disease severity. Prior small case reports had noted improvements when these patients were administered convalescent plasma as a treatment for COVID-19, but this study is the first retrospective cohort study to indicate a benefit when compared to non-recipients.
“Despite the inevitable limitations of retrospective data, gathering enough case reports was really only possible through a large and comprehensive registry such as ours,” said corresponding author Jeremy Warner, MD, associate professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC). “We find these results compelling and certainly hope that they will be quickly investigated in a prospective clinical trial.”
The COVID-19 and Cancer Consortium was formed in early 2020 to rapidly collect data as part of an effort to understand the unique effects the coronavirus has on cancer patients. Its genesis began with a Twitter exchange. The study on convalescent plasma also originated with a Twitter discussion between Dr. Thompson and co-author Michael Joyner, MD, professor of anesthesiology at the Mayo Clinic, who is leading a national program sponsored by the U.S. government to coordinate the collection and distribution of COVID-19 convalescent plasma for the treatment of individuals with severe or life-threatening disease.
The CCC19’s five founding institutional members include Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, Advocate Aurora Health in Wisconsin and Illinois, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center in Miami, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. For more information about CCC19, visit https://ccc19.org.
This news release was produced in collaboration with Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
To learn more about Advocate Aurora’s research, visit aurora.org/research.