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Medical science comes up with a potential treatment for the dreadful pandemic that panicked the world in the year 2009, H1N1 flu.

The year 2009 witnessed the outbreak of a baneful pandemic worldwide, namely the H1N1 influenza better known as swine flu. The flu hit many parts of the world affecting thousands of individuals and also killing a significant number of them. Epidemiological studies have revealed that during the prevalent pandemic in the year 2009, of the total number of individuals diagnosed with the flu, Ten to forty four percent of the hospitalized patients required intensive care, and twenty five percent to fifty percent of these patients succumbed to death eventually.

Convalescent Plasma Treatment refers to the use of plasma from patients who have recently recovered from an infection for treating the patients who are diagnosed with the same infection. Convalescent plasma therapy is known to be beneficial for the treatment of different categories of flu including Spanish influenza and influenza A. However, the efficacy of this treatment to cure patients diagnosed with severe H1N1 influenza A 2009 viral infection is unknown.

A major study was carried out to know whether the Convalescent Plasma Treatment is as effective on H1N1 influenza as it is on the other forms of influenza. Ninety three patients diagnosed with severe H1N1 2009 infection requiring intensive care were picked for the study. Out of the study population, twenty patients (about twenty one percent) were treated with the convalescent plasma therapy. The treatment group and the non-treatment group were matched via attributes like age, sex, and disease severity scores.

The findings of the study revealed that mortality in the group that was treated with the convalescent plasma therapy was significantly lower as compared to the non-therapy group. The analysis carried out during the study clearly indicated that plasma treatment highly reduced the mortality odds. The mortality rate in the group treated with the plasma therapy was twenty percent, as opposed to a higher fifty five percent mortality rate in the group without the therapy. Another subgroup consisting of forty four patients was analyzed and it was found that the viral load in the group treated with plasma therapy also decreased at a higher rate as compared to the non-treatment group. One of the key observations during the study was that none of the patients who were treated with the therapy developed any adverse effects due the treatment.

The treatment of severe H1N1 2009 influenza with convalescent plasma therapy reduces the respiratory tract viral load, serum cytokine response, and more importantly the mortality rate. The researchers point out one of the key benefits of the plasma therapy in patients diagnosed with the H1N1 influenza to be the absence of the problem of drug resistance. In addition, the therapy also remains effective until the virus has changed substantially enough to affect the immune system. This form of therapy may prove to be useful in the future for the treatment of other such novel viral infections.

Reference:
A study titled “Convalescent Plasma Treatment Reduced Mortality in Patients With Severe Pandemic Influenza A (H1N1) 2009 Virus Infection" For more information, please visit: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/cid/ciq106.pdf

Author: Ann M
Editor: Dr.Bimal Rajalingam
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Disclaimer: This article is written by a non-medical professional.