“Impact of pentaglobin in severe COVID 19 pneumonia- a prospective study.”

Abstract

Background The current COVID-19 pandemic has become a global public health crisis and presents a serious challenge in treatment of severe COVID pneumonia patients. With an imperative need for an effective treatment, we aimed to study the effectiveness of Pentaglobin, an intravenous immunoglobin in the treatment of severe Covid-19 pneumonia patients. Methods This is an open-label non-randomised controlled study. Patients in the study group (n=17) received Pentaglobin in addition to standard therapy and the control group (n=19) received only the standard of care treatment. Severity of illness were quantified by severity scores and inflammatory laboratory parameters were compared between the two groups. Results The average length of hospital stay in pentaglobin group were 12.35±6.98 days compared to 10.94±4.62 days in standard treatment group with mean difference of 1.4 days (p value=0.4). Pentaglobin did not provide an added advantage in terms of reducing the duration of hospital stay. There was no significant difference between both the groups in terms of requirement of invasive ventilation (p=0.56) and mortality (p=0.86). CT Severity score (OR= 1.39 95% CI= 1.09-1.77, P=0.01), APACHE II score (OR=1.16 95% CI= 0.99-1.35, P=0.05) and the SOFA score (OR=2.11 95% CI=1.13-3.93, P=0.02) were independent predictors of mortality. Conclusion The administration of pentaglobin in COVID -19 patients has no significant effect in reducing the risk of mechanical ventilation or death, in disease worsening or in reduction of inflammation.

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“…Furthermore, there were some case reports and small studies regarding the usage of Pentaglobin as adjunctive therapy in COVID-19 (185)(186)(187)(188). Although in a large retrospective cohort study, no significant difference in mortality was observed (n=316, p=0.374), a subgroup of severe COVID-19 patients who have not yet received invasive mechanical ventilation may benefit from Pentaglobin therapy (p=0.063).…”