Use of convalescent plasma therapy in hospitalised adult patients with non-critical COVID-19: a focus on the elderly from Hungary

Abstract

Convalescent plasma therapy might be a feasible option for treatment of novel infections. During the early phases of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, several promising results were published with convalescent plasma therapy, followed by more disappointing findings of randomised controlled trials. In our single-centre, open-label, prospective, cohort study, we assessed the findings of 180 patients treated with convalescent plasma during the first four waves of the pandemic in Hungary. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality; secondary outcomes were clinical improvement and need for intensive care unit admission by day 28. Subgroup analysis comparing elderly and non-elderly (less than 65 years of age) was performed. Twenty (11.4%) patients died by day 28, at significantly higher rates in the elderly subgroup (3 vs. 17, p < 0.01). One hundred twenty-eight (72.7%) patients showed clinical improvement, and 15 (8.5%) were transferred to the intensive care unit until day 28. Non-elderly patients showed clinical improvement by day 28 in significantly higher rates (improvement 74 vs. 54, no improvement 15 vs. 11, worsening or death 4 vs. 18 patients, p < 0.01). In conclusion, we found similar clinical outcome results as randomised controlled trials, and the impact of risk factors for unfavourable clinical outcomes among patients in the elderly population.

The Impact of Comorbidities and Obesity on the Severity and Outcome of COVID-19 in Hospitalized Patients—A Retrospective Study in a Hungarian Hospital

“…Several Hungarian studies have investigated the epidemiology, clinical features, and efficacy of therapies and vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 infection [27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45]. However, to our knowledge, none of these involved the assessment of the impact of risk factors in a large, hospitalized population of COVID-19 patients.…”