COVID-19 Update: Researchers Find Relation Between Coronavirus And Blood Clots, Strokes Among Adults

Experts have reported cases of blood clotting related to the novel coronavirus that have caused strokes in young adults and middle-aged who are infected with the disease.

In a report published in the April 28 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, there was a series of five cases at the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City which indicated that these blood clots might cause strokes in young patients.

The cases started coming in on March 23 and continued until April 7 within a two-week period and according to the Mount Sinai researchers, these patients, aged between 33 and 49, already tested positive for COVID-19 when they were admitted to the hospital for treatment.

The youngest case was a 33-year-old woman who was already positive for the virus and was reported to have developed numbness and weakness in the left side of her body within a day after suffering from coughs, a headache and chills for a week.

The report continued on to say that the doctors found a blood clot stuck in a cerebral artery of the patient and she was treated with blood thinners and anticoagulant drugs before being released 10 days later to a rehabilitation center.

Dr. Thomas Oxley, an interventional neurologist with Mount Sinai Beth Israel Hospital in New York City and the lead writer of the report, told the Washington Post that he had treated a 44-year-old man with a similar case where a large blood clot was needed to be extracted from the patient’s brain and added that he saw “clots forming in real time around it”.

Two other large medical systems, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia and NYU Langone Health in New York City, also reported COVID-19-related strokes and said that 12 of their patients with clot-caused strokes had the coronavirus with 40 per cent of them being younger than 50 had no pre-existing stroke factors, the Post continued.

Dr. Fadi Nahab, an associate professor of neurology and pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta, said that while other centers are on the alert for coronavirus-related strokes but no common patterns have been observed.

"It's definitely reasonable that the coronavirus may have an impact on the risk of having stroke," Nahab said. "We've noticed there is definitely associated with the virus that's not typically seen in other viral infections."

Nahab, however, said that he and his colleagues usually find deep vein clots in the legs and arms which are associated with COVID-19 or clots in the lungs so it is still unclear, according to him, if the virus is causing the increase of stroke cases based on these numbers.

Dr. Mark Harrigan of the University of Alabama-Birmingham Stroke Center confirmed some nurses’ reports of COVID-19-related blood clotting saying that these nurses had experienced caring for intubated COVID-19 patients with the advanced disease having “stringier and lumpier blood”, CBS News reported.

However, he also stated that even though the center sees 2,000 stroke cases a year, there had been no reports of increased numbers of patients suffering from COVID-19 related strokes.

"In fact, we've had a 50% decrease in our stroke volume over the last month or so," Harrigan said.

Harrigan thinks that people are not seeking medical treatment for stroke symptoms in fear of contracting the coronavirus from hospitals.

"We are clearly seeing patients are coming to emergency rooms later, after their stroke symptoms, than they normally would," Nahab said. "Many patients, even if they're having stroke symptoms, are too afraid to actually call 911 or go to the emergency room out of fear they may get the virus."

Nahab and Harrigan encourage people to seek immediate medical attention for stroke symptoms.