Blood clot drug completely ineffective as post-Covid remedy, analysis finds

A drug to cut back blood clots, broadly prescribed to Covid-19 sufferers after discharge from hospital, doesn’t reduce their probabilities of readmission or enhance survival, in response to groundbreaking analysis which is ready to alter remedy protocols around the globe.

The outcomes of the UK-wide trial, led by Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the College of Cambridge, have been shared with the Monetary Occasions. They discovered that prescribing the anticoagulant Apixaban didn’t assist sufferers recovering from reasonable and extreme Covid and in a small variety of instances prompted critical hurt.

Round 29.1 per cent of individuals given the drug ended up again in hospital or died, in contrast with 30.8 per cent receiving commonplace care.

The findings are the primary to emerge from a pioneering research known as HEAL-COVID — Serving to to Alleviate the Lengthy-term penalties of Covid-19 — led by Prof Charlotte Summers, an intensive care specialist at Addenbrooke’s in Cambridge.

Summers believes it’s the solely trial on the earth analyzing remedies for sufferers who’ve recovered from Covid, about one in three of whom die or require readmission to hospital inside a 12 months. She mentioned: “Having survived the ordeal of being hospitalised with Covid-19, far too many sufferers discover themselves again in hospital, usually growing longer-term issues because of the virus.”

Dr Mark Toshner, joint chief investigator for the research with Summers, mentioned: “Up till now it’s been assumed that Apixaban helps sufferers get better after extreme Covid-19 and that thinning their blood to stop clots is helpful.” The researchers’ hope was that “these outcomes will cease this drug being needlessly prescribed to sufferers with Covid-19 and we will change medical observe”, he added.

The research, carried out in collaboration with Liverpool Scientific Trials Centre and Aparito, a well being know-how firm, additionally confirmed no profit from Apixaban by way of the variety of days sufferers remained alive and out of hospital 60 days after their preliminary discharge: for each types of remedy the typical was 59 days.

Of the 402 trial members receiving the drugs, a small quantity had main bleeding that meant they needed to cease the remedy. All therapies, Summers cautioned, had dangers “and also you don’t need to give folks a danger for no profit”.

The trial is funded by the Nationwide Institute for Well being and Care Analysis (NIHR) and the Cambridge NIHR Biomedical Analysis Centre. So way over 1,100 NHS sufferers hospitalised with Covid have taken half.

Proof of the virus’s persevering with results had created “an pressing want for us to search out remedies that stop this vital burden of sickness and enhance the lives of so many nonetheless being affected by Covid”, Summers added.

The research will proceed to check one other drug known as Atorvastatin, a broadly used lipid reducing drug, or “statin”, that acts on different mechanisms of illness which are considered vital in Covid.

Professor Nick Lemoine, NIHR Scientific Analysis Community Medical Director, mentioned outcomes comparable to these from the HEAL-COVID research “assist to strengthen our data of how sufferers could be handled following their keep in hospital and the way restoration charges could be improved upon”.

Findings from scientific trials, “whether or not they establish new remedies or rule out strategies of care, are very important and rigorous proof in relation to altering finest medical observe”, he added.