A possible link between blood clots and current Covid symptoms is under scrutiny by UK researchers.
While Covid can cause a period of acute illness, it can also cause long-term problems. Research has suggested that less than a third of patients who have continued symptoms of Covid after being hospitalized with the disease feel fully recovered a year later.
Now researchers need to begin a series of trials to explore whether anticoagulants can help those who have had the disease.
Professor Ami Banerjee of University College London, who is leading a study called Stimulate-ICP, said a Covid infection is known to increase the risk of blood clots and that people who have had the disease have a increased risk of related conditions such as stroke, heart attack and deep vein thrombosis.
In addition, Banerjee said research by South African scientists had suggested that people with long Covid have blood clots in their blood, while studies in the UK suggest that almost a third of long-term patients with Covid have clotting abnormalities. .
But he said it was unclear whether the findings were generalizable, and although anticoagulants had been asked on social media to be available from those findings, more research was needed, especially because anticoagulants can cause an increase in anticoagulants. the blood. risk of bleeding.
The point was echoed by Professor Betty Raman of Oxford University, who warned that studies on microcoagles and Covid for a long time had not yet been carried out on a large scale, microcoagles were difficult to detect and it was not yet clear whether coagulation. Abnormalities are, in fact, a cause of ongoing Covid symptoms.
“There needs to be more dedicated studies on the effectiveness of anticoagulants [for long Covid]as we did with [treatments for] acute sick patients, ”Raman said.
The Stimulate-ICP trial, which is set to begin recruiting in a few days, will divide 4,500 people with long Covid into four groups in which participants receive regular care, antihistamines, an anti-inflammatory or anticoagulant drug for three months. “This will allow us to say if this improves fatigue and other outcomes of people with long Covid,” Banerjee said.
While the trial focuses on people who had Covid in the community, another study, called Heal-Covid, includes people hospitalized with the disease, with the goal of identifying treatments that can help prevent or reduce symptoms in Covid. course.
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“Heal-Covid is not a study that treats people with long Covid, we aim to prevent things from getting to this point,” said Professor Charlotte Summers, of Cambridge University, who is the lead researcher on the work.
The team recruited 1,118 participants, with one arm of the trial involving participants receiving anticoagulants. “The trial included anticoagulants because it was thought that there were a greater number of large blood clots that occurred in the posthospital phase of the disease rather than microcoagulations,” Summers said.
The post-hospitalization study Covid-19, or Phos-Covid, which has provided key information about the long Covid, is also investigating the problem of coagulation.
Chris Brightling, a professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Leicester and lead researcher on the study, said one area the team was looking at was whether people with continued symptoms after hospitalization have chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension. If found, he said, it would be strong evidence that microcoagles are a substantial problem.
“While if we don’t see it, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that obviously certain people have clots, but it would make it less likely to be intrinsically a major problem,” he said.
Banerjee said that while it was understandable that some patients with continued Covid symptoms may feel frustrated because certain therapies were not yet available, rigorous studies were essential. “We have to make sure we don’t [lower] the safety bar, ”he said.