Convalescent plasma therapy in critically Ill COVID-19 patients: A retrospective cohort study.

Background: Convalescent plasma (CP) therapy can be defined as a passive immunity transfer approach involving the administration of plasma for therapeutic purposes to inpatients hospitalized due to an active virus infection. Passive immunity antibodies can reduce target organ damage and directly neutralize the responsible pathogens. A limited number of studies on the use of CP have reported that critically ill patients can benefit from CP therapy. Aim: We aimed in this study as the outcomes of CP therapy in critically ill coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients in intensive care unit (ICU) and determine the differences between the recovery and mortality groups. Patients and Methods: This retrospective design study involved critically ill patients who were diagnosed with COVID-19 pneumonia or who were suspected of having COVID-19 in the ICU between April 1, 2020, and June 1, 2020. Comorbidity of patients, respiratory findings, hemodynamic data, laboratory data, and poor prognostic measures were compared between mortality and recovery group. Results: Convalescent plasma (CP) therapy was supplied for 41 (13.58%) patients in total of 302 COVID-19 patients. Twenty-nine patients were died in total of 41 COVID-19 patients who supplied CP therapy. The mortality rate is 70.73% in CP therapy. There was a significantly higher incidence (P < 0.021) of invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) and significantly lower mean arterial pressure (MAP) values in mortality group (P < 0.05). There were significantly higher NLR values (P < 0.05), lower platelet count (P < 0.05), lower of glomerular filtration rate (GFR) level (P < 0.05), higher creatinine values (P < 0.05), higher lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels (P < 0.05), higher D-dimer levels (P < 0.05), higher level of pro-brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) (P = 0.000), rate of fever (P = 0.031), arrythmia (P = 0.024), and transfusion-associated circulatory overload (TACO) (P = 0.008) were more often in mortality group. Conclusion: Convalescent plasma therapy seems not useful in critically ill COVID-19 patients.

4D-QSAR investigation and pharmacophore identification of pyrrolo[2,1-c][1,4]benzodiazepines using electron conformational-genetic algorithm method.

In this paper, we present the results of pharmacophore identification and bioactivity prediction for pyrrolo[2,1-c][1,4]benzodiazepine derivatives using the electron conformational-genetic algorithm (EC-GA) method as 4D-QSAR analysis. Using the data obtained from quantum chemical calculations at PM3/HF level, the electron conformational matrices of congruity (ECMC) were constructed by EMRE software. The ECMC of the lowest energy conformer of the compound with the highest activity was chosen as the template and compared with the ECMCs of the lowest energy conformer of the other compounds within given tolerances to reveal the electron conformational submatrix of activity (ECSA, i.e. pharmacophore) by ECSP software. A descriptor pool was generated taking into account the obtained pharmacophore. To predict the theoretical activity and select the best subset of variables affecting bioactivities, the nonlinear least square regression method and genetic algorithm were performed. For four types of activity including the GI50, TGI, LC50 and IC50 of the pyrrolo[2,1-c][1,4] benzodiazepine series, the r(2)train, r(2)test and q(2) values were 0.858, 0.810, 0.771; 0.853, 0.848, 0.787; 0.703, 0.787, 0.600; and 0.776, 0.722, 0.687, respectively.