A potential therapeutic treatment for COVID-19 patients has suddenly emerged, which is a common blood-thinning drug — Low Molecular Weight Heparin (LMWH). Treating doctors have said that the drug used as a subcutaneous injection has reduced hospitalisation periods and also improved recovery rate. The drug has significantly dropped the rate of sudden deaths by more than 90%.

Specialists spoke to TOI spoke stating that doctors country wide are now using the drug as a prophylactic treatment to counter blood inflammation and clotting as these are the two main complications that the SARS-CoV-2 infection is causing in the human body. The doctors’ has a simple logic that it is easy to prevent new blood clots/inflammation from developing, as compared to treatment of the existing blood clots or inflammation.

Pune-based critical care expert Subhal Dixit said that post-mortem reports from Italy have shown that COVID-19 caused small blood clots in blood vessels, besides inflammation. Doctors in India have been using blood thinners, mostly LMWH, since the start of this pandemic. However their use has increased manifold now and the evidence of their efficacy is growing too. The formation of clots in the lung vessels can result in respiratory complications. Also, small blood clots in the heart, brain and the kidneys vessels can trigger heart attacks, brain strokes and acute kidney injury in moderate to critically ill coronavirus patients. The LMWH has proven to be exceedingly effective in preventing complications.

A blood test known as D-dimer is carried out to rule out any blood clots in patients. In coronavirus patients, the D-dimer is often raised. Evolving treatment strategies, which includes the use of LMWH, has helped doctors to make sure maximum COVID-19 recoveries.

Ujwala Mhatre, Mumbai-based Nanavati hospital’s intensivist, also said that in COVID treatment, anticoagulation drugs such as LMWH are valuable tools to prevent several mechanisms that are involved in COVID-associated thrombosis.

Critical care expert Kapil Borawake, said that the LMWH has appeared to be the drug of choice and necessary prophylactic during the treatment of hospitalised COVID patients. Its administration shouldn’t be delayed in the early phase of the disease. Also, recovered patients with pre-existing conditions are instructed to continue the drug in oral form after discharge.

Source: The Times of India