Blood thinners show treatment promise
Treating coronavirus patients with blood thinners could help boost their prospects for survival, findings at New York’s largest hospital system show, offering another clue about dealing with the deadly condition.
The results of an analysis of 2,733 patients, published Wednesday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, are part of a growing body of information about what has worked and what hasn’t during a desperate few months in which doctors have tried dozens of treatments to save those dying of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.
Valentin Fuster, a physician in chief at Mount Sinai Hospital and one of the study’s authors, said in an interview that the observations are based only on a review of medical records and that more rigorous, randomized studies are needed to draw broader conclusions, but that the results are promising.
“My opinion is cautious, but I must tell you I think this is going to help,” he said. “This is the opening of the door for what drugs to use and what questions to answer.”
Since March, when the pandemic hit Europe and the United States, doctors have been reporting mysterious blood clots, which can be gel-like or even semisolid, in a significant subset of coronavirus patients.
Autopsies of patients who died of respiratory arrest have shown some had unusual microclots in their lungs rather than the typical damage expected.
And last month, doctors reported in the New England Journal of Medicine on five unusual cases of COVID-positive people in their 30 and 40s experiencing large strokes.
The Mount Sinai study focused on hospitalized patients treated at its five branches from March 14 through April 11.
Among patients who weren’t on ventilators, those treated with blood thinners died at similar rates to those who did not get blood thinners. But they lived longer — a median of 21 days compared to 14 days.
For patients on ventilators, the difference was more significant. About 63 percent of patients who didn’t receive the medications died compared with 29 percent who received the treatment.
Another critical finding of the study is that giving blood thinners to these patients appears to be relatively safe. There was not a significant difference in the most dangerous side effect of anticoagulants — bleeding — in those who were on the drugs vs. those who were not.
As a result of the analysis, Fuster said, the hospital system changed its treatment protocols several days ago to begin giving patients with COVID-19 higher doses of blood thinners.
Deepak Bhatt, a professor at Harvard Medical School who specializes in interventional cardiology, called the paper “a very important study” with the blood issues in COVID-19 patients having evolved from just a suspicion to a well-recognized complication of the virus.
“What we are figuring now is what do we do now that we know” in terms of treatments, he said.
Doctors caring for the sickest coronavirus patients confront a limited arsenal of treatments.
On May 1, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization for the antiviral drug remdesivir in patients who are hospitalized and seriously ill.
However, trials of other treatments, including those involving hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug touted by President Donald Trump, have been stopped because of a lack of efficacy and concerns about toxicity.
Anticoagulants have been a key building block of treatment plans for weeks at many medical centers, prompted by discoveries about how the virus attacks the human body and an increasing recognition of blood-related complications in coronavirus patients.
Fuster said many unknowns remain about the blood thinners, including the best dosage and timing, and whether patients with COVID-19 who are not sick enough to be hospitalized and are dealing with their illness at home would benefit from taking the medication.
He said Mount Sinai is beginning a trial this week that will include 5,000 patients who will be randomized into treatment groups to try to answer some of those questions.