Written by Anusha Gokhale, a grade 8 student

As you know, the world has been fighting the deadly novel coronavirus for the past few months. Scientists have been exploring new treatments and ways to treat it. One of the treatments that’s working well is something called  Plasma Therapy.

What is Plasma Therapy?

Plasma therapy is being used to treat severe COVID-19 patients. In this therapy, doctors take plasma (the liquid part of the blood) from patients who have recovered from Coronavirus and inject it in the patient who is still suffering. This creates antibodies in the patient Simply put, these are proteins that are produced by your body that stop viruses (or bacteria, etc) from harming the body. So, when some intruder enters your body, the immune system fights it.

When was Plasma Therapy introduced?

Plasma therapy was first introduced in the 19^th century when a physiologist called Emil von Behring and a bacteriologist named Kitasato Shibasaburou discovered that they could use antibodies present in the serum ( another blood component) to fight the bacterial infection Diptheria. Since then doctors have been using it to treat and prevent both bacterial and viral infections. Recently, researchers and healthcare professionals have been trying to use this method to treat the respiratory disease SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Let’s hope that this therapy works and the number of patients would reduce.   

Share this...

Facebook

Twitter

Linkedin