Dr. Elliott Bennett-Guerrero has been a professor of anesthesiology at Stony Brook University since 2015, where he also serves as vice chair of clinical research and innovation in the anesthesiology department. Currently, Dr. Elliott Bennett-Guerrero is participating in a research study conducted by Stony Brook Medicine aimed at determining the efficacy of treatments for COVID-19 using the plasma of recovered patients.
As the novel coronavirus continues to rock the globe, health care professionals and researchers are working constantly towards new treatments and potential vaccines to stop the spread of the virus. One such avenue of research uses plasma from recovered COVID-19 patients. Though not thought of as a cure, convalescent plasma has shown great promise as a way to help COVID-19 patients recover faster. The concept of convalescent plasma as a treatment has been around for more than a century, and it has been used in the past to treat other respiratory afflictions, including during the 1918 influenza epidemic. Convalescent plasma is the liquid component of human blood left over when stripped of red and white blood cells. The theory behind this type of treatment is that the plasma of humans that have recovered from an illness will be rich with antibodies that can help the body fight the illness. Patients with COVID-19 receive convalescent plasma from survivors of the same disease in the hopes that the antibodies will help them recover faster. Early administration of this treatment is particularly important, as researchers believe the extra antibodies can help patients recover faster when they have not yet developed enough antibodies on their own.
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A resident of Stony Brook, New York, Dr. Elliott Bennett-Guerrero serves as professor and vice chairman of the Department of Anesthesiology of Stony Brook Medicine. Also fulfilling duties as the institution’s medical director for perioperative quality and patient safety, Dr. Elliott Bennett-Guerrero belongs to a medical team taking care of patients diagnosed with COVID-19.
COVID-19 has ravaged the world since the start of 2020, bringing everything to a near standstill. Many will be pleased to know that scientists around the world are working around the clock to develop a vaccine for the virus. As of July 22, 2020, there were more than 140 teams of global researchers working on vaccines. These vaccines were at different stages of development with 142 at the pre-clinical stage where they are tested on animals and 25 in the clinical stages where they are tested on humans. In the pre-clinical stage, vaccines are injected into animals to see if an immune response results. Vaccines that create a response move to the clinical stages (Phases I, II, and III). In Phase I, the potential vaccines are injected into a small number of people to test efficacy and safety. Safe and effective vaccines then move to Phase II where they are tested on hundreds of people to understand more about their safety and dosage, and later on to Phase III where they are tested on thousands of people. In this last phase, vaccines are tested for efficacy in comparison to a control group administered with a placebo. Only vaccines that prove safe and effective in all stages stand to receive approval for general use. |
AuthorDr. Elliott Bennett-Guerrero is both an educator and a vice chairman at Stony Brook Medicine. Archives
June 2022
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