Active Therapy with Passive Immunotherapy May Be Effective in the Fight against Covid-19

ABSTRACT

Passive immunity against pathogens in epidemics has historical roots. Convalescent plasma (CP), plasma collected from individuals who have recovered from an infectious disease, has been used to confer therapeutic benefits in previous epidemics, including measles, mumps, and influenza, and remains the first line passive immunotherapy in emerging diseases, including the H1N1 influenza pandemic (2009) and now Covid-19 (1). Over the last several decades, as technology has developed to purify and manufacture plasma-derived immunoglobulin (IG) as a drug therapy, hyperimmune globulin (H-IG) formulations have been used as the second line of passive immunotherapies against these diseases.