Plasma Therapy Mutating the COVID Virus

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  • A new research on a covid patient gives new insight on the virus mutation ability.
  • A man treated with remdesivir and plasma Therapy succumbed to covid.
  • Studying his body researchers found that the plasma Therapy altered the virus spike protein.
  • While the remdesivir treatment didn’t cause any mutation the plasma Therapy did. 
  • The mutations altered the antibodies capability of binding to the virus, making it ineffective treatment.
  • But on the other hand, the virus infectivity was restored by a second mutation. 
  • This shows that plasma Therapy need to be used cautiously for covid treatment 

Antibody treatment for COVID-19 seems to have spurred mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 that infected a man with a compromised immune system, says an article published in Nature. 

  • In mid-2020, a man was admitted to hospital with COVID-19. 
  • He had been diagnosed with cancer in 2012; the illness and his treatment had probably weakened his immune system.
  • The man’s COVID-19 was treated with two courses of the antiviral drug remdesivir and, later, two courses of convalescent plasma — antibody-laden blood from people who had recovered from COVID-19. 
  • He died 102 days after admission.

Plasma Therapy Triggers Mutation 

Ravindra Gupta at the University of Cambridge, UK, and his colleagues analysed viral genomes obtained from the man during his illness (S. A. Kemp et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03291-y; 2021). 

  • The viral populations in his blood changed little after remdesivir treatment. 
  • But after each course of convalescent plasma, the samples were dominated by viruses with a particular pair of mutations in the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, the main target of the immune system.

How did the mutations effect?

  • Experiments showed that one of the mutations weakened the potency of the antibodies in the convalescent plasma, yet also reduced the virus’s infectivity. 
  • The second mutation restored infectivity.

What does this mean?

The potential for viral evolution means that convalescent plasma should be used cautiously when treating people with compromised immunity, the authors say.

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Source: Nature