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IMAGE: Under FDA emergency-use authorization, doctors successfully resolved COVID-19 in a seriously ill, immunodeficient woman using a very high-neutralizing antibody-titer convalescent plasma from a recovered COVID-19 patient. However, further study suggested. view more
Credit: UAB
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - A 72-year-old woman was hospitalized with severe COVID-19 disease, 33 days after the onset of symptoms. She was suffering a prolonged deteriorating illness, with severe pneumonia and a high risk of death, and she was unable to mount her own immune defense against the SARS-CoV-2 virus because of chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which compromises normal immunoglobulin production.
But when physicians at the University of Alabama at Birmingham recommended a single intravenous infusion of convalescent blood plasma from her son-in-law who had recovered from COVID-19 disease a remarkable, beneficial change followed. Her physician, Randall Davis, M.D., professor in the