‘Blood Washing’: How Effective Is This Treatment Against Long-COVID?

A lot of experts consider COVID-19 as a mass disabling occurrence that even though most people have fully recovered from this highly infectious virus, a substantial chunk of patients develops long-lasting and sometimes debilitating symptoms, also called Long COVID.

Approximations of how many COVID-19 patients are enduring long-lasting symptoms quite considerably, a WIRED report specified.

However, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently approximated that almost one in five COVID-19 patients is reporting persisting symptoms.

With hundreds of millions of cases worldwide, even the more modest approximations still suggest that tens of millions of individuals are experiencing lingering effects.

Yet, as these patients search for effective care, researchers scramble to define, understand, and treat this so-called "new phenomenon."

Apheresis or 'Blood-Filtering' Treatment

There have been reports already in the US of such unproven treatments against long COVID, like vitamins, supplements, fasts, infusions, ozone treatment, and off-label drug prescriptions.

However, a British study published in the BMJ journal highlights a rising international trend of costly blood-washing therapeutics.

This research performed by the British outlet ITV News and the BMJ showed that thousands of long COVID patients travel to private clinics in different countries, including Cyprus, Germany, and Switzerland, to receive apheresis or blood-filtering treatment, which has not been proven to treat long COVID.

Essentially, apheresis is an established medical treatment, although it is used for treating certain conditions by filtering out known problematic blood components, like filtering out low-density lipoprotein or LDL in people who have intractable high cholesterol or eliminating malignant white blood cells in individuals with leukemia.

Long-COVID Patients Prescribed Anticoagulant Drugs

In the case of long-COVID patients, apheresis treatment is used to eliminate various things that may or may not be a problem.

This includes LDL and inflammatory molecules, a technique first designed to treat those who have cardiovascular disease.

Beate Jaeger, an internal medicine doctor, running the Lipid Center North Rhine in Germany and has begun to treat long-COVID patients, touts this approach, which involves blood-filtering through a heparin filter. She's prescribing long-COVID-patients a cocktail of anticoagulant drugs, as well.

Relative to the new treatment, Jaeger hypothesized that the blood of those with long COVID is extremely viscous and has tiny blood clots. She suggested that thinning blood with apheresis and drugs can improve microcirculation and overall health.

However, there is no evidence that this hypothesis is correct or the treatment. It was rejected when Jaeger attempted to publish his hypothesis in a medical journal.

A Premature Treatment

According to professor of vascular body Robert Ariens from the University of Leeds School of Medicine, "the treatment is premature."

For one thing, as specified in Ars Technica, where this report first came out, researchers do not understand how microclots are forming, if apheresis and anticoagulation drugs are reducing them, and if such a reduction would even matter for the disease.

Ariens explained if one does not know the mechanics by which the microclots are forming and "whether or not they are causative of disease," it appears premature to develop a treatment to take the microclots away, as both apheresis and triple anticoagulation are not without dangers, the evident one is bleeding.

Related information about apheresis for long COVID is shown on Mercurialism's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on COVID-19 in Science Times.