There’s new evidence emerging that blood thinners could prove to be an effective treatment for those who’ve been severely afflicted with coronavirus. A study, which focused on patients in New York City, showed that those who received anticoagulants were more likely to survive.
Dr. Valentin Fuster, director of Mount Sinai Heart and physician-in-chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital, spoke about the possibility to CNN on Wednesday. “The patients who received anticoagulants did better than those who didn’t,” Fuster said. “This has implications already. People, I believe, should treat these patients with antithrombotic.” He also stressed that it’s the findings weren’t enough to draw definitive conclusions at this point.
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The study looked at more than 2,700 patients treated at the New York hospital, which has seen a significant number of COVID-19 cases during the pandemic. In March, some of the hospital patients were given anti-clotting drugs, which were on a per-patient basis as decided by doctors. They noticed that patients who had to be put on ventilators were able to breathe more successfully if they’d been given the blood thinners.
Twenty-nine percent of patients on ventilators who were given blood thinners died, compared to 63 percent of those on ventilators who were not. Should this prove to be a successful method of treatment, researchers will need to determine which drugs would be the most effective.
There have been other possible treatments that have come up over the recent weeks, though none have led to anything concrete just yet. Dr. Jacob Glanville, a Bay Area doctor who was featured on the Netflix series Pandemic, announced back in April that his tireless work may help lead to one in the near future.
“We are happy to announce we have completed the engineering and we have some very potent antibodies that can be effective against the virus,” Dr. Glanville said at the time. His work was discussed on Wednesday at the now-daily White House press conferences. Dr. Anthony Fauci has said the science was well-established and that he supported the concept.
Along with scientists and health care officials, there have been a number of philanthropic efforts to help fund possible treatments or vaccines. Dolly Parton has donated $1 million to fund cure research, while Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has donated $1 billion, roughly one-third of his wealth. Additionally, Bill Gates is funding the development of multiple possible vaccines.
