Covid-19: Clinicians uncover rare blood clotting syndrome

A team led by a UCL clinical academic has outlined the mechanism behind rare cases of blood clots and low platelets seen in patients who have had the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine. The new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine , highlights the importance of rapidly spotting this new syndrome, known as vaccine-induced thrombosis and thrombocytopenia (VITT), as it requires a very different treatment from what is typically recommended for thrombosis. The team stressed that vaccination remains the key route out of the Covid-19 pandemic. Professor Marie Scully (UCL Institute of Cardiovascular Science), also a consultant haematologist at UCLH, and Dr Will Lester, of the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Birmingham, were the first clinicians in the UK to spot the link between the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine and rare cases of blood clotting with low platelet count. They also identified the correct diagnostic test for the syndrome and recommended a treatment approach that avoids the use of the blood thinner heparin. Having spotted the link, Professor Scully and colleagues, including Professor Marcel Levi (UCL Medicine), UCLH's former chief executive, alerted the medical community worldwide and regulatory authorities in the UK of their discovery and suggested a treatment approach. In the research paper, the team report on the cases of 23 patients, who all presented with thrombosis and thrombocytopenia after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine.