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WEDNESDAY, Sept. 16, 2020 (HealthDay News)<\/p>\n
Most people now know that COVID-19<\/a> can cause blood clots<\/a>, potentially leading to paralysis<\/a>, stroke<\/a>, heart attack<\/a> and death.<\/p>\n While it’s not clear precisely how SARS<\/a>-CoV-2 causes clots, a new study suggests that the amount of a particular protein — called factor V — in a patient’s blood may have something to do with it.<\/p>\n In March, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital obtained a blood sample from a patient with severe COVID-19<\/a> and noticed something unusual. The patient’s blood had significantly above-normal levels of factor V.<\/p>\n Researchers then studied more than 100 patients treated in the intensive care unit for COVID-19<\/a>.<\/p>\n High levels of factor V were found across the group, and nearly half of the patients had above-normal levels. When researchers compared the samples to historical records, more than 1 in 10 patients had higher factor V levels than had been seen before at the hospital.<\/p>\n “Aside from COVID-19<\/a>, I’ve never seen anything else cause markedly elevated factor V, and I’ve been doing this for 25 years,” study co-author Dr. Elizabeth Van Cott said in a hospital news release. She is a pathology investigator at Mass General and a pathology professor at Harvard Medical School.<\/p>\n The study found that patients with elevated factor V were more likely to have blood clots<\/a> in the lungs<\/a>, called pulmonary embolism<\/a>, and deep vein thrombosis<\/a> (DVT<\/a>), or clots in the veins.<\/p>\n Of patients with high levels of factor V, one-third had either DVT<\/a> or a pulmonary embolism<\/a>, compared with 13% of patients with lower levels.<\/p>\n While patients with high factor V levels were at greater risk for clotting problems, patients with lower factor V levels had a higher risk of death, researchers found.<\/p>\n A decrease in factor V levels might indicate patients are progressing to a serious and often fatal condition in which clotting processes become overactive, Van Cott and colleagues said.<\/p>\n They said the findings could help identify which patients are at increased risk of blood clots and death.<\/p>\n The findings were recently published online in the American Journal of Hematology<\/i>.<\/p>\n — Serena McNiff<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n![\"MedicalNews\"](\"https:\/\/images.medicinenet.com\/images\/HealthDay\/healthday.png\")
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