Recent research has established that Apixaban, the blood-thinning drug that is being used as potential life-saver to most Covid patients, does not work and could cause major bleeding.
Consequently, doctors, particularly in the United Kingdom, are advising people to stop taking the drug on account that it “does not stop them from dying or ending up back in hospital and also can have serious side-effects.”
The anticoagulant, according to Dennis Campbell, is administered to patients “when they are discharged after a spell in hospital being treated for moderate or severe Covid.”
Prof Charlotte Summers, the chief investigator of the trial and an intensive care doctor at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, says: “These first findings from Heal-Covid show us that a blood-thinning drug, commonly thought to be a useful intervention in the post-hospital phase, is actually ineffective at stopping people dying or being readmitted to hospital.”
“This finding is important because it will prevent unnecessary harm occurring to people for no benefit,” he added.
Co-chief investigator of the study Dr Mark Toshner said: “This trial is the first robust evidence that longer anticoagulation after acute Covid puts patients at risk for no clear benefit.
“Our hope is that these results will stop this drug being needlessly prescribed to patients with Covid-19 and we can change medical practice,” he offers. The study was reportedly conducted by experts from Addenbrooke’s and Cambridge University.
The researchers found that whereas 30.8 per cent of Covid patients who received standard care ended up back in hospital within a year, only a slightly smaller proportion, 29.1 per cent, of those on Apixaban did so.
In an attempt to find sustainable and effective treatments against Covid-19, doctors hoped that “the drug would reduce the risk of people suffering blood clots by thinning their blood.”
However, during the trial, as Campbell notes, some of the 402 participants who received the blood thinner suffered serious bleeding that led to them coming off the drug.