Researchers have used a minimally-invasive test to identify clots in small blood vessels in the skin of patients with severe Covid-19 that appeared normal. Scientists of the study said these clots were not seen in the skin of patients with other types of severe infectious lung disease or individuals with only mild or moderate Covid-19.
A skin biopsy is a procedure to remove cells or skin samples for laboratory examination. The researchers said a skin biopsy could help assess tissue damage related to Covid1-9 and help distinguish this blood vessel pathology from other forms of severe respiratory illnesses. The study was recently published in The American Journal of Pathology.
Lead investigator Jeffrey Laurence from Weill Cornell Medicine institute in the US said, “We were the first group to recognise that the lung disease of acute Covid-19 was different from other severe critical respiratory infections and that the unusual pathology was systemic.”
The scientists collected four-millimetre biopsy samples of normal-appearing skin from 15 patients in intensive care with Covid-19 and six patients with mild to moderate disease symptoms, such as fever, chills, cough, or shortness of breath. The researchers found that microthrombi or small blood clots were detected in 13 of the 15 patients with severe or critical COVID-19.
Laurence said, “Although anticoagulants were used in the pre-Covid-19 era in sepsis-associated pneumonia to reduce macrovessle thromboembolism, most randomized trials have not found this treatment benefits hospitalised patients who are critically ill with COVID-19 acute respiratory distress syndrome. These drugs may not be capable of reducing the microvessel thrombosis found with SARS-CoV-2 infection.”
