PhD defence A. (Arvind) Gharbharan

Below is a brief summary of the dissertation:

The first cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection in humans arose in Wuhan, China in December 2019. Since its emergence it has spread rapidly over the world and has caused one of the largest pandemics ever. This thesis will focus on virus neutralizing antibody-based treatment (from convalescent plasma (CP) or monoclonal antibodies) of COVID-19 and in particular during the beginning of the pandemic. The main conclusions are that: (1) the current evidence does not support the use of CP to treat hospitalized patients with COVID-19 who are immunocompetent, (2) CP therapy reduced hospital admissions of high-risk immunocompetent outpatients with early COVID-19 but CP with sufficiently high neutralizing antibody titers was required, (3) CP therapy may be beneficial for immunocompromised patients with COVID-19 regardless of in/outpatient setting in particular when monoclonal antibodies or direct-acting antivirals cannot be used (4) monotherapy with a monoclonal antibody can result in the emergence of viruses that are less susceptible to the monoclonal antibody and (5) treatment of immunocompetent and immunocompromised patients with CP rarely resulted in treatment-related serious adverse events.