An old method could provide new much-needed results...
As COVID-19 wreaks havoc around the world, researchers struggle to find vaccines and cures. Now, it's coming to light that there is a century-old procedure that may help us fight the virus.
"Some potentially good news on the COVID-19 treatment front: Thanks to a technique that’s more than a century old, recovered COVID-19 patients may be in a position to help the rest of us -- with their blood plasma," writes in its video description SciShow.
We have successfully used this technique since the late 1800s. It consists of giving transfusions of blood serum containing antibodies of a given disease.
Antibodies are produced by our system in order to recognize and bind to viral antigens on the surface of a virus. Even after an infection is finished, some of these antibodies remain in our blood and can be used to fight off the virus in other people.
However, although initially very popular, these blood serum transfusions displayed many complications and were soon replaced by the much more practical vaccines. But were they completely retired? It seems not.
Where are blood serum transfusions today and how do they work for COVID-19 patients? SciShow explains all that and more in this interesting video.
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prepared by Loukia Papadopoulos