COVID-19 NEWS
Advances and Answers in Pediatric Health
Path to Convalescence
Q: How does
the pediatric
community serve
in a pandemic that
primarily affects
adults?
By now it’s well established,
at least in the medical
community, how a
somewhat obscure concept
known as “convalescent
plasma” works.
Theoretically, antibodies of
a patient recently recovered
from infection could
continue destroying virus
circulating in the blood
of a sick patient, granting
the sick patient a kind of
reprieve to mount their
own immune response.
Theoretical because
it’s never been proven,
although there’s evidence
of its efficacy dating back to
the Spanish flu.
Kyle Annen, DO, got the call
on March 31. A colleague at
the University of Colorado
Hospital, next door to
Children’s Hospital Colorado
on the Anschutz Medical
Campus, had a patient
critically ill with COVID-19.
Dr. Annen had thought that
call might come. The FDA
had approved convalescent
plasma as a treatment for
COVID-19 just days before.
As Medical Director of
Transfusion Services at
Children’s Colorado’s Blood
Donor Center, which collects
97% of the blood products
used within the Children’s
Colorado system, Dr. Annen
knew it probably wouldn’t be
needed for pediatric patients.
But she knew she had some
adult donors who’d recovered
from the virus, and she’d
wondered if their plasma could
help patients her colleagues in
adult medicine were treating.
So when the call came, she was
ready. She got on the phone
and found a donor who could
come in right away.
But she’d need a negative
viral test to prove the donor
was no longer contagious.
Children’s Colorado already
had testing underway (see
“Put to the Test,” p. 4), but
the donor would still need to
come in, get swabbed and wait,
masked, for the test to come
back before they could donate.
The Pathology Lab held the
last spot on the last test run of
the day.
“I got the call at 11 a.m. and
had the product by 9 p.m.,”
Dr. Annen recalls. “It was an
incredible team effort. I had
donor center staff volunteering
to stay late, blood bank staff
staying late to get it processed,
everybody was all in.”
Even then, the product still
needed to go through FDA
infectious disease testing —
the vast majority of which is
done out of one processing
facility in Texas. Dr. Annen’s
team got it on the next flight
available. By the time it came
back, a day had passed and
it was after midnight. Lab
supervisor Leanne Polson
drove in at 1 a.m. to finish the
labeling required to release
the product and handed it off
to a courier, who ran it across
campus to the University
Hospital, where it was
immediately infused.
The patient made a gradual
recovery, weaning down to
minimal vent settings.
Dr. Annen’s team has
collected many more units of
convalescent plasma since
then. For a couple of weeks,
they were the only center
collecting convalescent
plasma in Colorado. Dr.
Annen is proud of their
responsiveness.
“But we need better data,”
she says. “As a treatment,
convalescent plasma is
relatively low-risk, the same
risk as a blood transfusion, but
we still don’t have definitive
research that it works. I’m
hoping to participate in some
outcomes studies.
“COVID-19 is terrible,” she
adds. “But it’s not going to be
the last terrible virus to come
through. Proving convalescent
plasma works will improve our
responsiveness in the future.” •
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