Blood thinners may help coronavirus-infected patients, study finds

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This is an intensive care room 2:23

(CNN) - Blood-thinning medications could help save some patients who are most severely affected by the new coronavirus, doctors reported Wednesday.

Findings from a team at Mount Sinai Hospital could help with a troubling problem that has shocked and horrified doctors treating coronavirus patients around the world: blood clots throughout the body complicating a disease that is already difficult to treat. try.

• Doctors try to understand why they see 'unprecedented' blood clots among covid-19 patients

The team now says it is conducting experiments to see which blood thinners may work best and in what doses.

"Patients who received blood thinners performed better than those who did not," Dr. Valentin Fuster, director of Mount Sinai Heart and chief physician at Mount Sinai Hospital, told CNN.

"This already has implications. I think people should treat these patients with antithrombotics, "he added.

The results are not yet clear enough to make strong recommendations. The team noted that patients who were already seriously ill were more likely to receive anticoagulants.

Improved results

Fuster and his colleagues observed more than 2,700 patients treated at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, which has been badly affected by the coronavirus. As of March, some patients received anticoagulant medications, according to the decisions made by the doctors on duty.

The team began to systematically analyze whether the drugs made a difference. They did this, especially for patients who had to be hooked up to ventilators to help them breathe.

They found that 29% of respirator patients who received anticoagulants died, compared to 63% of respirator patients who did not receive anticoagulants.

"Our findings suggest that systemic anticoagulants may be associated with better outcomes among hospitalized patients with covid-19," they wrote in their report, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

The researchers did not find that patients who received anticoagulants were significantly more likely to develop bleeding problems, one of the risks of the medications.

Different patients received different doses and different types of anticoagulants, so it will be important to systematically study which combination of doses and medication works best, Fuster said.

• Pandemic expert says coronavirus could last 3 years in the United States

"Coagulation is a problem, without a doubt"

His team has started such a study and will test different doses of classic blood thinning heparin or one of the newer oral blood thinning drugs like dabigatran, a direct thrombin inhibitor, in the future.

There is no doubt that blood clotting is a major factor in the death of covid-19 patients, Fuster said.

"We have performed 75 autopsies and coagulation is a problem, without a doubt," he said.

"It starts with the lungs, followed by the kidneys, the heart and ends with the brain."

The consequences, he said, are devastating. "It is very dramatic for all of us. You feel like you can do very little except to support the life of the patient, ”said Fuster.

Fuster would also like to study whether anticoagulants could help patients who are not sick enough to be hospitalized. Some hospitals have reported a worrying increase in strokes among people under the age of 50, who would not normally be at risk. Many of these patients were later found to be infected with covid-19.

It is still unclear why the virus is causing blood clotting, but increased clotting may be a side effect of the severe inflammation caused by some viral infections.

anticoagulants