NEW YORK – A recent post-mortem examination of coronavirus patients found that blood clotting was provided not only in the lungs, but also in the body’s organs.
In an article published on June 25 in Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine, autopsies of seven COVID-19 patients revealed clotting in small blood vessels in “several organs”.
Dr. Amy Rapkiewicz, director of the pathology branch at NYU Langone Medical Center, said it was known that some COVID-19 patients were known to be expanding blood clotting problems. Doctors have already reported blood clots in other people’s larger blood vessels with the virus, but it’s also not completely transparent that it’s directly similar to COVID, Rapkiewicz said.
He observed a blood clot expelled through a COVID-19 patient at the General Hospital in Mexico City on May 30, 2020 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Photo via Hector Vivas / Getty Images)
In Rapkiewicz’s study, on June 25 at Lancet’s eClinicalMedicine, autopsies of COVID-19 patients revealed clotting in small blood vessels in “several organs”.
Rapkiewicz reported that he had observed blood clotting in the giant veins of coronavirus patients who died temporarily after arriving at the hospital, as well as clotting “in small veins, microscopic veins, which would be seen under a microscope.”
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“And it doesn’t sound like a great distinction, but physiologically, it takes other things for clotting to occur in giant veins and small veins. Therefore, it turns out that your body’s clotting formula is destabilized in some populations of COVID patients who are severely expanding and fatal infections,” he said.
One representation shows the formation of a blood clot in a blood vessel. (Photo: Amandine Wanert / BSIP / Universal Images Group Getty Images)
The post-mortem exam also revealed more than the same number of giant bone marrow cells called megakaryocytes in various organs, adding the lungs and heart. Rapkiewicz said those cells “the same way don’t circulate in the blood, so it shouldn’t locate them in the heart.”
“We were finding them in larger numbers in the heart, which is very abnormal,” she added. “We don’t know the reason why, but the connection to the clotting is that megakaryocytes produce platelets, and platelets are one of the things that are responsible for clotting.”
Rapkiewicz said additional studies were needed for this link regarding the new coronavirus, but that it “doesn’t just seem circumstantial.”
Some of the patients on the post-mortem exam had gained blood thinners, such as blood thinners such as heparin. But the effects recommend that doctors may want more remedies or antiplatelet remedies for COVID patients who target small blood vessels.
“I think we still want those drugs because the patients I performed the autopsy who had gained anticoagulation had less clotting in the giant vessels, but they still had clotting in the small vessels. So we want to target the small boats,” he said.
Scientists around the world have been quick to perceive how SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, affects the body. Worrying reports have indicated that the virus could cause long-term damage in many regions, adding the lungs, nerve formula and kidneys.
A recent researcher at University College London described more than 40 COVID-19 patients who have suffered a multitude of brain effects, adding severe neurological headaches such as delirium, brain inflammation, stroke and nerve damage.
In an exam published in June, more than one part of the patients with COVID-19 affected had some form of cardiovascular injury.
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“I think there is still a need for very basic clinical studies on COVID biology,” said Rapkiewicz, who added that the goal of his examination and others of the same type is for researchers to better perceive how to save it from the severe headaches reported in some patients
“I have a lot of phone calls with other people from Johns Hopkins and others from (Massachusetts) General about what might be the underlying that motivates clotting, and that’s vital in the sense that it probably won’t save you COVID. We’re just looking to save you the headaches that cause the death of these other people.
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This story has been reported from Cincinnati.