A blood-thinning drug given as a potential life-saver to many people recovering from severe COVID-19 does not work and can cause major bleeding, research found.
The findings have led to calls for doctors to stop advising people to take Apixaban, because it does not stop them from dying or ending up back in hospital, and can also have serious side-effects.
The anticoagulant is given to people when they are discharged after being treated in hospital for moderate or severe COVID-19. It is widely used by British National Health Service British hospitals.
However, the British government-funded Heal-COVID trial has found that it does not work.
“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,” said professor Charlotte Summers, the trial’s chief investigator.
“This finding is important because it will prevent unnecessary harm occurring to people for no benefit,” said Summers, who is an intensive care doctor at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge.
“This trial is the first robust evidence that longer anticoagulation after acute COVID-19 puts patients at risk for no clear benefit,” said Mark Toshner, the cochief investigator of the study. “Our hope is that these results will stop this drug being needlessly prescribed to patients with COVID-19 and we can change medical practice.”
Guidelines drawn up by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommend that people in hospital with COVID-19 be given Apixaban for 14 days, even if they are discharged during that time.
Doctors keen to find effective treatments for the virus hoped that the drug would reduce the risk of people having blood clots by thinning their blood.
However, during the trial, which was run by experts from Addenbrooke’s Hospital and Cambridge University, some of the 402 participants who received the blood thinner experienced serious bleeding that led to them coming off the drug.
The trial team also found that while 30.8 percent of COVID-19 cases who received standard care ended up back in hospital within a year, only a slightly smaller proportion of those on Apixaban, or 29.1 percent, did so.
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