All About Plasma

People living with a primary immunodeficiency, or PI are missing key parts of their immune system that help fight infections. Some types of PI leave people unable to make antibodies of their own. Many individuals living with PI rely on immunoglobulin replacement therapy (or Ig) to provide the antibodies that we don’t make on our own. Those antibodies are necessary to fight off bacteria and viruses. These replacement antibodies come from human plasma. This plasma is collected from volunteers and is used to make Ig and other plasma-derived therapies that are necessary to the survival of many living with PI as well as other rare diseases. We will be discussing the importance of plasma with Amy Efantis, the President & CEO of the Plasma Protein Therapeutics Association or PPTA, an organization representing more than 850 human plasma collection centers in North America and Europe.