COVID-19 Daily Research Briefs

A case series identified five patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) who were mechanically ventilated and had a PaO₂/FIO₂ < 300. They were all given convalescent sera from donors who had recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection; fever resolved in four out of five patients within three days, and ARDS resolved in four out of five patients by 12 days after the transfusion of convalescent sera. At the time of writing, three had been discharged from the hospital and two were in stable condition. While promising, clinical trials are needed given the small number of patients and uncontrolled design. Written by Mark H. Ebell, MD, MS, on March 27, 2020. (Source: Shen C, Wang Z, Zhao F, et al. Treatment of 5 critically ill patients with COVID-29 with convalescent plasma [published online March 27, 2020]. JAMA. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2763983)  

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