Aussie led study identifying treatments for COVID

Hospitals have stopped using convalescent plasma from coronavirus sufferers to treat seriously ill patients, after groundbreaking Australian research found the treatment was causing more harm than good.

Steve Webb, a Monash University professor and intensive care doctor at Perth Hospital. Picture: Sean Middleton

Hospitals have stopped using convalescent plasma from corona­virus sufferers to treat seriously ill patients, after groundbreaking research by an Australian-led global consortium of intensive care doctors found the treatment was causing more harm than good.

The research, conducted by Remap-cap, showed more than 900 severely ill patients around the world, including a handful of Australian patients, did not improve their condition when given the plasma.

The same consortium of researchers, headed by Steve Webb, a Monash University professor and intensive care doctor at Perth Hospital, has also found that blood thinners are possibly dangerous for severely ill patients.

“In intensive care unit patients, we found that the convalescent plasma in ICU patients crossed a threshold showing it was not effective,’’ Professor Webb, one of the founders and international chairman of Remap-Cap, said.

“We have also showed that using blood thinners is not effective and may be harmful. This had become routine care, so stopping harmful therapies is equally important as showing beneficial therapies.’’

The convalescent plasma study, released this week, revealed that more than 900 severely ill ­patients did not improve their con­dition with receiving the plasma, which is antibody-rich from people who have recovered from the virus.

Also this week, British and Australian hospitals introduced two arthritis drug treatments for the severely ill after another Remap-cap study found they saved up to 8 per cent of lives of ­severely ill coronavirus patients.

The research into using arthritis drugs began as soon as it emerged that severely ill coronavirus patients had elevated cyto­kines. While early studies using people who were not as ill had mixed results, the Remap-cap research showed the use of arthritis drugs tocilizumab and sarilumab, given within 24 house of entering intensive care, significantly improved survival rates by 24 per cent and cut time spent in hospital by a week to 10 days. This was as well as receiving a corticosteroid.

Professor Webb told The Australian: “There are around 3500 patients dying a day in the US and even more across all of Europe, and while not all patients will have been suitable for intensive care, of those that were, we would expect 5 to 8 per cent … to now survive (using the arthritis drug treatment) where they would not have before. Five per cent of those numbers is hugely significant.’’

He added: “It is very rewarding. As a clinician, there is a limit to how many patients you can directly help, so this research has an amazing effect-amplifier and can improve outcomes for millions of patients I have never met.’’

In what has been a medical coup for Australia, Professor Webb successfully switched his global study started in 2009 to conduct randomised trials for Community-Acquired Pneumonia following the swine flu scare to quickly discovering the best coronavirus treatments for intensive care patients. The Remap-cap research has been significant yet cost-effective at one-tenth of the price of other international research projects.

At any one time, the Remap-cap trials are using as many as 12 different protocols around the world for as many as 4100 COVID-19 patients across 290 hospitals in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australasia.

Once the vaccines begin to take effect in the next few months, the Remap-cap trials will refocus on Third World and Second World countries where viral infections are expected to remain high.