Coronavirus Update: SARS-CoV-2 Triggers Genetic And Functional Changes In Platelets

COVID-19 could trigger changes in blood platelet levels which could in turn cause heart attacks, strokes and other serious health consequences in infected individuals.

The experts at the University of Utah found in a new study that inflammatory proteins produced by the body during the infection could significantly alter the blood platelets, make them hyperactive and more prone to fatal blood clots.

This finding is important because understanding the underlying cause better could possibly lead to finding a potential treatment option that can prevent them from happening in infected individuals.

“Our finding adds an important piece to the jigsaw puzzle that we call COVID-19. We found that inflammation and systemic changes, due to the infection, are influencing how platelets function, leading them to aggregate faster, which could explain why we are seeing increased numbers of blood clots in COVID patients,” News Medical quoted Robert A. Campbell, Ph.D., the study’s senior author and an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine.

It is already known that the coronavirus infection is linked to an elevated risk of blood clotting which could trigger heart problems and organ failure in some people, especially those who are obese, diabetic, and those with high blood pressure levels.

Thus, the researchers, who sought to find out what might be going on, studied 41 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Seventeen of them were treated in the intensive care units, including nine of them who were on mechanical ventilator support. They compared the blood samples of these patients with those from healthy people of the same age group.

The researchers found that the novel coronavirus appears to trigger genetic changes in the blood platelets. They also studied an important component of blood clot formation in laboratory studies and demonstrated that the platelets in COVID-19 patients aggregated more readily.

The findings suggested that these changes significantly altered the way the platelets interacted with the immune system which in turn, might have lead to severe lung injuries.

Platelets are tiny blood cells that are responsible for forming blood clots in order to prevent bleeding. In the case of COVID-19, the researchers believe that the inflammation caused by the coronavirus infection could affect the cells that produce platelets and cause genetic alterations which could make them hyperactive and cause deadly blood coagulation.

They also demonstrated that pre-treating the platelets of COVID-19 patients with aspirin prevented them from turning hyperactivity.

Although the findings indicated that aspirin could help improve outcomes, the researchers warn against using the drug to treat COVID-19 unless recommended by healthcare providers.