Doctors are reporting bizarre, unsettling cases. They describe patients with startlingly low oxygen levels – so low that they would normally be unconscious or near death – talking and swiping on their phones. Asymptomatic pregnant women suddenly in cardiac arrest. Patients who by all conventional measures seem to have mild disease deteriorating within minutes and dying at home.
Some of these abnormalities may be explained by severe changes in patients’ blood.
Some doctor groups have raised the controversial possibility of giving preventive blood thinners to everyone with covid-19 – even those well enough to endure their illness at home.
COVID-19 autopsies have shown some people’s lungs filled with hundreds of microclots.
Clots might be responsible for a significant share of U.S. deaths from covid-19.
A Dutch study published April 10 in the journal Thrombosis Research provided more evidence the issue is widespread, finding 38% of 184 covid-19 patients in an intensive care unit had blood that clotted abnormally. The researchers called it “a conservative estimation” because many of the patients were still hospitalized and at risk of further complications.
Early data from China on a sample of 183 patients showed that more than 70% of patients who died of covid-19 had small clots develop throughout their bloodstream.
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One doctor said it was more like altitude sickness. Because their lungs continued to filter out CO2. I wonder if these patients would have fared better with the use of E.C.M.O.s’. Or could a comprehensive therapy be developed to rest the lungs, while the disease is arrested and the aggresive immune response is mitigated.
Their is on going research it seems people with chronic lung problems (asthma, Bronchitis, etc.) do exhibit some lung regeneration.See: (Melanie Königshoff, Sejal Saglani, Benjamin J. Marsland, Oliver Eickelberg
European Respiratory Journal 2013 41: 497-499; DOI: 10.1183/09031936.00173012 ) PDF.
Most of Boobus AmeriKanus are not smart enough to take the initiative and research on… say the CDC website… the various symptoms and complications on… say… the regular run of the mill deadly PNEUMONIA!
Definitely not aspirin or any ACE inhibitor – increases CV2019 infection rate, severity of illness, risk of death.
The early promising results of werhydroxychloroquine were due to review of past studies of the drug and test tubes. When Trump started mentioning the drug no Corvid 19 patients had been treated with it.
Now that the drug has been tested with patients it has become clear that it has little to no positive effect and can causes serious heart problems that can worsen the outcome.
Convalescent plasma in combination with a blood thinner might be a good combination to try. The plasma is harvested from patients that have recovered from Covid 19. It is rich in antibodies and then the blood thinner would prevent the clots. It might also be helpful if doctors compared the medical records of recovered patients against those that died. If the recovered patients were on a blood thinner then most of the blood thinner patients would show up in recovered patient list.
blood oxygen levels are typically measured by a device placed on your finger, It is assumed that the oxygen levels there are representative for the rest of the body.
However the body has the ability to reduce the flow of blood to some parts of the body when extra oxygen is needed somewhere else. However the heart, lungs, and brain always get the oxygen they need.
I suspect a Conscious Covide19 victim with unusually low oxygen levels cannon do anything physical with there arms or legs without blacking out or getting very light headed.
So, warfarin, not aspirin? That sort of thing?
Yet I’ve heard a recent report that (hydroxy?)chloroquine is not as effective for COVID-19 as initially believed, and even causes problems in some patients. This one’s a tricky beast. My guess is it may need several different treatments that vary by patient. We’ll need to figure out the criteria for each of them.
There was a report from Wuhan a few weeks ago reporting percentage morbidity and mortality by blood type:
60 % relative risk for “O”;
120 % for “B” ;
and about neutral for “A”.
I usually despise “Relative Risk”, especially when used by drug companies, but the actual numbers were given, with a comment that distribution of blood types has ethnic variation.
It would be interesting to analyse the potential for thrombosis by blood group- if there is cross-linking of the “B” antigens there would be potential for more microthromboses.
An hypothesis exists for low blood oxygen leading to organ failure: Covid-19 attaches to hemoglobin heme and dissociates iron so that blood cannot carry oxygen. Hydroxychloroquine interferes with Covid-19 heme bonding so that iron can reattach to heme and resume carrying oxygen.
Don’t read too much into the statement about some people functioning well at low O2%. It is becoming pretty clear that there is coagulopathy going on in a subset of COVID patients. As per the O2 levels and some patient’s being fine with low O2 levels, this is actually pretty normal. Not everyone reacts the same way or shows symptoms at the same O2 levels. There is a normal variation in response in the population in my experience; having dealt with this sort of thing in the realm of COPD (not exactly the same due to slow onset), blood loss/severe anemia (much more similar to what seems to be happening with these COVID people), and the odd pulmonary embolism (those often turn out really bad however I did see a guy filled with them one time who was walking and talking way better than expected).
The reanimation of corpses is another delayed symptom related to that asymptomatic without oxygen effect.
This is being actively discussed in the medical community. One thing to remember is that the kinds of anticoagulants we are talking about here are a high-risk class of medication. We have an oath to do no harm and since we have no data on the overall safety of treating COVID patients with anticoagulants or at what dose to treat them, this makes many people understandably uncomfortable. Given our current level of understanding and knowledge, the most reasonable strategy I have seen is to monitor D-dimer. If D-dimer becomes elevated above 100 then start anticoagulation. How long to continue is still under debate
Every protein in the suite of protein a virus RNA encodes usually has a nasty function. We need to quickly figured out what the functions of COVID-19 proteins.
Yeah, I’m having a bit of trouble crediting this particular one: The virus is simultaneously lowering your blood oxygen AND allowing your CNS and muscles to operate without the oxygen?
Edit: I suppose a blood clot in the right place could seriously throw off a finger oxymeter. It’s only measuring the O2 level in your finger, after all.
Very interesting. From my own experience I’ve never had such lucid and vivid dreams in my entire life. Except when I’ve been under general anesthesia. It’s known the virus sits in the brain, so I take no responsibility for any future bizarre or stupid comments I might post on this site.
Well, given that another symptom in some COVID patients was acute necrotizing encephalopathy…
And as they say every problem is an opportunity – this could be a huge advance, imagine what we might learn from this?
A few mutations away from a zombie apocalypse?