Blood clot risk higher for six months after having COVID-19

pharmafile | April 7, 2022 | News story | Business Services  

A study from Sweden suggests that after a COVID-19 infection, there is an increased risk of developing a serious blood clot for the next six months.

The research found that people with severe COVID-19, and those infected during the first wave, had the highest clot risk. This emphasises the importance of being vaccinated against the virus.

These findings, published in the British Medical Journal, may help explain a doubling in the incidence of, and deaths from, blood clots in England since the start of the pandemic, compared with the same periods in 2018 and 2019. The risk was higher in the first wave than the second, which could be attributed to improved treatments and increased rate of vaccination among the elderly population by the second wave.

“The degree of complications associated with COVID-19 is much stronger and lasts for much longer than what we might be getting after vaccination,” Dr Frederick Ho, a lecturer in public health at the University of Glasgow, told The Guardian.

“Even those people with mild symptoms who do not need to be hospitalised might have a small increase in the risk of (blood clots).”

When the researchers compared the risks of blood clots after COVID-19 to the normal level of risk, they found that four in every 10,000 COVID-19 patients developed DVT compared with one in every 10,000 people who did not have the virus. In addition, about 17 in every 10,000 COVID-19 patients had a blood clot in the lung compared with fewer than one in every 10,000 who did not have COVID-19.

Lina Adams

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