British Researchers Looking At Aspirin As A Treatment For COVID 19
Researchers in Britain are looking at whether aspirin may be a possible treatment for COVID 19.
They say the common painkiller is also used as a blood thinner, and that’s what interests’ researchers, because COVID 19 patients are at higher risk of blood clots.
This is part of the British recovery trial that has already shown a cheap and widely available steroid can help save the lives of patients seriously ill with covid 19.
From our news partner CBS Radio and WebMD:
Now research indicates aspirin – a cheap, over-the-counter drug – may help COVID patients survive by helping to prevent those blood clots.
A British researcher, professor Peter Horby of Oxford University, told a committee in Parliament that aspirin is the latest drug added to the Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy (RECOVERY) trial, which is looking at multiple treatments, the Pharmaceutical Journal reported.
Aspirin appears to help stop blood clotting in the lungs, he said.
“Clotting is a big problem” with the coronavirus, he said. “Aspirin is a widely available, cheap drug which, if it were to work, would be a huge boost.”
Meanwhile, a study overseen by the University of Maryland School of Medicine showed that COVID patients had fewer complications when they took aspirin.
Researchers examined 412 patients who had coronavirus, according to the study published in Anesthesia and Analgesia. The study said 98 of those patients received aspirin a week before hospital admission, or within 24 hours of admission. The others didn’t.
The patients given aspirin were 43% less likely to be admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU), 44% less likely to be placed on mechanical ventilation, and 47% less likely to die in the hospital, the study concluded, according to a news release from the medical school.
“This is a critical finding that needs to be confirmed through a randomized clinical trial,” study leader Jonathan Chow, MD, an assistant professor of anesthesiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine said, according to a news release. “If our finding is confirmed, it would make aspirin the first widely available, over-the-counter medication to reduce mortality in COVID-19 patients.”
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