Covid-19 roundup: NIH spot­lights blood thin­ners in its next big tri­al; All it took was a pan­dem­ic to get JPM out of SF

Af­ter im­mune mod­u­la­tors and an­ti­bod­ies, blood thin­ners are the next class of drugs to be put through a Phase III tri­al or­ga­nized un­der the NIH’s AC­TIV ini­tia­tive.

Three dif­fer­ent an­ti­co­ag­u­lants have been named for the mas­ter pro­to­col: he­parin, as­pirin and apix­a­ban. In­formed by stud­ies sug­gest­ing that many pa­tients who died from Covid-19 have formed un­usu­al blood clots through­out their bod­ies — in­clud­ing in their small­est blood ves­sels — the NIH wants to see which ther­a­pies are the most ef­fec­tive at pre­vent­ing or re­duc­ing them and thus im­prov­ing out­comes for pa­tients.

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