COVID & CLL patients

[markjeep51]

Just had a good discussion with my oncology Physicians Assistant (PA) at the Veterans Administration (VA) in the USA Nashville facility regarding COVID treatments for CLL patients like me. Am 69 yrs old male , have CLL/SLL and on w & w. I do not have COVID. I have my second Shingles shot in a few weeks. The PA thought that having such a shingles shot was going to be a benefit even though I have CLL. Also, I was told that I might be offered a COVID vaccine in February. At the moment, anyone over 75 years old at the VA can get the shot. I was told that this should be of real benefit; contrary to some opinions I have been reading on this blog. In regards to IgG infusions, which I plan to start sometime this spring, the IgG serum will not have any COVID antibodies in it. I was hoping that it would. Was told that all IgG serum is irradiated during the manufacturing process and doing such irradiation, will destroy any COVID antibodies. The VA does not provide COVID treatment to patients unless they are systematic and are admitted to a VA hospital. Once admitted, they are given Remdesivir ( or other similar medications), convalescent plasma ( if really sick), and the monoclonal antibody cocktail from Regeneron. Note that the VA will not give monoclonal antibody cocktail to a person as a "preventative" medicine but only as a "treatment" medicine, once one get COVID. The PA did acknowledge that convalescent plasma studies have had mixed results but the VA does have that medicine in their arsenal. I am personally offering no opinion on the above. I am just reporting what I was told. My next appointment with my oncologist is in early February.

[shazie]

Thanks for the info. Yesterday, I emailed my three different oncologists and they confirmed that monoclonal antibody cocktail is not offered as a preventative measure. There need more studies to be done to confirm the benefit of this cocktail. If other members in this forum have any info to the contrary I would love to get the reference to the study so I can forward it to my oncologists.

[bennevisplace in reply to shazie]

The Provent "prophylactic" phase 3 clinical trial of AZ's antibody cocktail AZD7442 is up and running.

clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show...

Scroll down for study locations, there are 102 in the USA.

[AussieNeil Partner Founder Admin]

Hi Mark,

Regarding your comment "Was told that all IgG serum is irradiated during the manufacturing process and doing such irradiation, will destroy any COVID antibodies", with respect, you must have misunderstood what was said. IgG serum is purely antibodies/immunoglobulins - well as purely as can be done to prevent the transfer of any blood borne viruses. It is made by extracting out IgG antibodies from the pooled donation of blood plasma from over 1,000 blood/plasma donors in order to provide you with replacement antibodies that you can't make, resulting from the immune response to all the infections/vaccinations those donors have had! During the IgG production process, the extracted IgG is finely filtered to remove any viruses, as these are larger than the IgG immunoglobulin proteins.

There has been some research into coronavirus specific antibodies found in IgG and indeed what is provided now does include antibodies from previously experienced coronavirus infections, which cause some common colds, MERS and the older SARS coronavirus. See: healthline.com/health/coron... It's possible that these might provide some protection against the SARS-CoV-2 virus which causes COVID-19 infections, because there are shared antigen protein structures. As another member recently posted, stocks of IgG production currently infused, may have been made a year or more ago, so older production batches are not likely to contain antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2, but the amount will increase over time, increasing the protection transferred from those much appreciated donors.

Neil

[CoCoLuna11 in reply to AussieNeil]

Yes, that was another point made by the immunologist I saw today, that we should be getting some antibody from our ivig infusions depending on where it comes from geographically, which led to the topic of socioeconomic status and donors. Then I felt weird about potentially benefitting from someone else’s misfortune. But that’s a while other topic.

[markjeep51 in reply to AussieNeil]

Thank you for clarifying. I must have misunderstood the physicians assistant when he spoke with me. Once again thanks.

[thompsonellen]

I've mentioned it before, but Dr. Byrd, who most of you know is a leading CLL specialist, is advising patients to take the vaccine, saying "the calvary is coming" and calling it "game changing." He also mentioned plasma worked well with some subsets of patients, which would include me. I only post this because of the post mentioning some of us thinking the vaccine may not benefit us.