COVID-19 people are more likely to suffer from clotting issues, which can lead to serious complications. Now, researchers at the Medical University of Vienna have discovered that a certain anticoagulant medicine can help COVID-19 patients live longer, while also influencing how long the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus remains active.
The findings were published in the journal Cardiovascular Research recently.
Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is a complicated viral disease with a wide range of symptoms. While it was thought at the start of the global pandemic that COVID-19 was largely a lung disease, it is now recognized that infection with the bacterium SARS-CoV-2 affects various functional systems in the human body. Blood clotting is one of these functioning systems.
Thromboses and embolisms, such as strokes, pulmonary or myocardial infarctions, and even deep vein thromboses, are more common in COVID-19 individuals.
Since July 2020, the use of anticoagulant medicines has been part of the COVID-19 treatment guidelines.
Anticoagulant medications enhance COVID-19 patients’ survival rates, however, they have little effect on immunological processes connected to blood coagulation (immunothrombosis).
“The coagulopathy observed in COVID-19 patients is novel and differs in many respects from previously known coagulation problems,” explains Alice Assinger – one of the authors of the study, “COVID-19-associated coagulopathy displays characteristics that, although partially comparable with other coagulation diseases, cannot be fully explained by them.”
In the spring of 2020, when the pandemic was still in its early stages, Alice Assinger’s group began looking for an explanation for this COVID-19 sub-condition.
The analysis revealed, however, that patients treated with low-molecular-weight heparin, the most commonly used anticoagulant, have a shorter time of active SARS-CoV-2 infection.
“In patients who receive this drug, infection time is an average of four days shorter than in patients who are not treated with low-molecular-weight heparin. We were surprised to see that low-molecular-weight heparin may have a direct effect on coronavirus and its infectivity,” says David Pereyra – the first author of the study from MedUni Vienna’s Department of General Surgery.
Experimental evidence suggests that heparin can prevent SARS-CoV-2 from infecting cells by inhibiting the virus’s capacity to bind to them.
These observations were made as part of a close partnership between the three hospitals involved — Vienna’s Favoriten Hospital, Innsbruck Regional Hospital, and Linz’s Johannes Kepler University Hospital — as well as an active interaction between basic researchers and physicians, according to Alice Assinger.
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