For over a hundred years, there has been an alluring mystery around serum, the pale filtrate from blood that contains antibodies. Today, it is back in fashion, the latest candidate in the fight against COVID-19In May this year, the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) approved 38 hospitals across the country to participate in PLACID, or convalescent plasma therapy (CP) trials. They even facilitate a mass of other kinds of immune system cells — natural killer cells, macrophages, T cells — that can destroy and swallow whole residual infectious cells. Likewise, any blood/ plasma transfer has to deal with the possibilities of transfusion reactions as side-effects, making the whole process quite hard, more so when coupled with the fact that (unlike ordinary blood/ plasma transfusions) only a few people can be donors. ‘Serum sickness’Early indications that plasma therapy was an untamed beast came from domesticated horses.

Source: The Hindu August 15, 2020 10:52 UTC