Sign up for our free Health Check email to receive exclusive analysis on the week in health
Get our free Health Check email
A drug which thins the blood and has been given to many patients recovering from severe Covid can cause serious bleeding and does not work, research has shown.
The anticoagulant Apixaban is given to patients being discharged from hospital following a bout of moderate to severe Covid, but a UK government-funded study has found that it can have serious side-effects.
The findings have led to calls for doctors to stop prescribing the drug because it does not stop people from ending up back in hospital and can have dangerous side-effects. It is currently being widely used by NHS hospitals.
The UK government-funded Heal-Covid trial has discovered that the drug does not work and is in fact dangerous.
Prof Charlotte Summers, the chief investigator of the trial, said: “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,” added Prof Summers, who works as an intensive care doctor at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge
Dr Mark Toshner, the co-chief investigator of the study, said: “This trial is the first robust evidence that longer anticoagulation after acute Covid-19 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 added.
Currently, guidelines drawn up by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) suggest that patients in hospital with Covid are prescribed blood-thinning therapy for 14 days following the illness. This applies even if they are discharged during this time.
It was initially hoped that the drug would reduce the risk of people with Covid-19 from suffering blood clots, by thinning their blood.
Patients were enrolled in the trial - run by experts from Addenbrooke’s and Cambridge University - when they were discharged from hospital, following their first admission for a bout of Covid-19. They were randomised to a treatment and their progress was then tracked.
However, a number of the 402 participants who received the blood thinner experienced serious bleeding which resulted in them coming off the drug.
The trial also revealed that while 30.8 percent of Covid patients who received standard care ended up back in hospital within one year, only a very slightly smaller proportion of those being treated Apixaban actually did so (29.1 per cent).
Prof Summers said that the decision by Nice to recommend blood-thinning therapy was “based on consensus rather than evidence.”
When the treatment was first recommended for Covid patients, 11 countries around the world had issued recommendations for treatment for the post-hospital stage of a Covid-19 infection.
