Filed Under: COVID-19Mary Van Beusekom | News Writer | CIDRAP News  | May 07, 2020

A study of autopsy findings of the first 12 patients who died of COVID-19 in a hospital in Hamburg, Germany, has found that 7 (58%) of them had undiagnosed deep vein thrombosis, suggesting that the virus may cause abnormal blood clotting.

In the prospective cohort study, published yesterday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, researchers discovered that the direct cause of death in four patients was massive pulmonary embolism from deep vein blood clots in the legs that lodged in a lung artery, causing a blockage. Read more.

A pathogen doing his own research on autopsy tissue sees the spikes as the toxin part of COVID-19. They attach to the lining of the arteries and cause microclots that are not visible on radiology scans. He describes specifically how the immune system is disrupted by this process which causes increased susceptibility to viruses and 10-20 times higher incidence of certain cancers.

Frequency Research Foundation has identified micro blood clots consistently in scans of those infected with COVID. Vaccination may accelerate this clotting and appears to be the major cause of the deaths of the over 12000 registered deaths in the VAERS government database. This phenomenon in the brain, heart, lungs, or reproductive organs can cause long term disability in survivors.

New Cause of COVID-19 Blood Clots Identified

A new study reveals the virus triggers production of antibodies circulating through the blood, causing clots in people hospitalized with the disease.

Stephanie King

Blood clots continue to wreak havoc for patients with severe COVID-19 infection, and a new study explains what may spark them in up to half of patients.

The culprit: an autoimmune antibody that’s circulating in the blood, attacking the cells and triggering clots in arteries, veins, and microscopic vessels. Blood clots can cause life-threatening events like strokes. And, in COVID-19, microscopic clots may restrict blood flow in the lungs, impairing oxygen exchange.

Outside of novel coronavirus infection, these clot-causing antibodies are typically seen in patients who have the autoimmune disease antiphospholipid syndrome. The connection between autoantibodies and COVID-19 was unexpected, says co-corresponding author Yogen Kanthi, M.D., an assistant professor at the Michigan Medicine Frankel Cardiovascular Center and a Lasker Investigator at the National Institutes of Health’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

“In patients with COVID-19, we continue to see a relentless, self-amplifying cycle of inflammation and clotting in the body,” Kanthi says. “Now we’re learning that autoantibodies could be a culprit in this loop of clotting and inflammation that makes people who were already struggling even sicker.”

‘Some of the worst clotting we’ve ever seen’

Co-corresponding author Jason Knight, M.D., Ph.D., a rheumatologist at Michigan Medicine, has been studying antiphospholipid syndrome antibodies in the general population for years.

“Half of the patients hospitalized with COVID-19 were positive for at least one of the autoantibodies, which was quite a surprise,” says Knight, also an associate professor of internal medicine and a leading expert on diseases caused by autoantibodies.

In the new Science Translational Medicine publication, they found about half of the patients who were very sick with COVID-19 were exhibiting a combination of high levels of both the dangerous antibodies and super-activated neutrophils, which are destructive, exploding white blood cells. In April, the team was the first to report that patients hospitalized for severe COVID-19 had higher levels of neutrophil extracellular traps in their blood.

To learn more, they studied the explosive neutrophils and the COVID-19 antibodies together in mouse models to see if this could be the dangerous combination behind the clots.

“Antibodies from patients with active COVID-19 infection created a striking amount of clotting in animals – some of the worst clotting we’ve ever seen,” Kanthi says. “We’ve discovered a new mechanism by which patients with COVID-19 may develop blood clots.”