Sobi arthritis drug cuts death risk; Heart drugs may help prevent COVID-19 blood clots

The following is a summary of some recent studies on COVID-19. They include research that warrants further study to corroborate the findings and that have yet to be certified by peer review.

Arthritis drug cuts death risk in high-risk patients

Hospitalized COVID-19 patients at high risk for becoming critically ill and dying had significantly better outcomes if they received the anti-inflammatory drug anakinra, researchers have found.

To test the drug, sold as Kineret by Sweden's Sobi Inc, the researchers looked for patients with high blood levels of a protein called suPAR, which is linked to higher odds of needing mechanical breathing assistance and death from COVID-19.

The 594-patient trial tested anakinra, which blocks the effects of inflammatory proteins IL-1-alpha and IL-1-beta, against a placebo.

The risk of death was 55% lower in patients who received anakinra, and 80% lower for the sickest patients in the trial, the researchers reported in Nature Medicine.

"The clinical benefit with anakinra treatment was already apparent from day 14, and this is of clinical importance because the first 14 days is the period during which a patient is expected to worsen. Anakinra benefit was maintained until day 28," they said.

They note that measuring suPAR allows for a more personalized treatment approach, but its use to guide COVID-19 treatment could be problematic because the tests are not available in every hospital.

Heart drugs might help prevent COVID-19 blood clots

Drugs that prevent blood clots after procedures to unclog heart arteries might also be useful for clot prevention in patients with COVID-19, new data suggests.

The coronavirus is known to affect genes that control platelets, fragments in the blood that form clots.

The inflammatory proteins generated by the virus cause platelets to become "hyperreactive" and form clots more easily and more often.

In test tube experiments described on Wednesday in Science Advances, researchers found that anticoagulants used after coronary stenting - clopidogrel, sold as Plavix by Bristol Myers Squibb and Sanofi, and ticagrelor, sold as Brilinta by AstraZeneca - keep COVID-19 patients' platelets from becoming over-activated by blocking the P2Y12 protein on their surface.

If additional studies confirm their findings, these P2Y12 inhibitors "may represent a particularly attractive therapy" for reducing the risk of inflammation-related blood clots in COVID-19, the authors say. -- Reuters