Arushi Bidhuri
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Written By: Arushi Bidhuri | Updated : July 17, 2022 12:46 PM IST
COVID-19 affect effects are known to people, and those who contracted the infection are more likely to suffer from at least one of those. One complication that several people who have had COVID suffered from is serious blood clots. Infected persons are at a higher risk of developing blood clots for up to six months after getting the infection. Even those who have had mild infections are at risk of developing blood clots. Several studies have shown that there is a link between coronavirus infection and blood clots.
According to a study published in the BMJ Medical Journal, people who have had COVID were at a higher risk of pulmonary embolism blood that blocks arteries in the lungs for up to 6 months. The researchers included more than a million Sweden national registries who contracted COVID from February 2020 to May 2021 and 4 million people who did not test COVID positive.
After proper analysis, they found that these people were also at a higher risk of deep vein thrombosis, which is a blood clot that typically occurs in the legs, for up to three months after getting infected with COVID. They also discovered that people who have had COVID were at a 33-fold higher risk of pulmonary embolism and a five-fold higher risk of deep vein thrombosis.
According to the study, people with pre-existing diseases were more at risk than those who experienced severe Covid symptoms. However, even those with moderate cases who did not require hospitalization were more at risk for deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism. Now a new study has identified a way to detect blood clots in the skin of patients with severe COVID that otherwise appear normal to the naked eye.
According to a study published in The American Journal of Pathology, scientists have found a minimally invasive technique to find blood clots in small blood veins in the skin of individuals with severe COVID-19 that seemed normal. According to the researchers, these clots were not present in the skin of patients with other types of severe infectious lung diseases or in those with only mild or moderate COVID-19.
A skin biopsy, which is a process to take skin samples or cells for testing in a lab, can help determine the extent of COVID-19-related tissue damage as well as help in separating this blood vessel disease from other severe respiratory infections.
For the study, the researchers included biopsy samples from nine hospitalised patients who passed away before the COVID-19 era and had severe or critical respiratory or kidney problems. As per study results, microthrombi, or tiny blood clots, were discovered in 13 of the 15 patients with severe or serious COVID-19. No microthrombi were found in the biopsies of patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 or patients with severe respiratory sickness or kidney illnesses in the pre-COVID-19 era, according to the researchers.
In contrast to only two patients with severe to critical sickness, all six mild to moderate COVID-19 patients had MxA, an antiviral protein that can prevent SARS-CoV-2 growth, showing that their immune systems were actively battling the virus, as per the findings.
