Aspirin to be tested as potential COVID-19 drug in search for 'widely available' medicine

Painkiller medicine aspirin will be investigated as a possible treatment for coronavirus in one of the United Kingdom’s largest clinical trial. According to Britain’s RECOVERY trial website, scientists will assess whether aspirin might reduce the risk of blood clots in people with the disease. The trial will be taking place in 176 hospital sites across the UK and the officials have so far recruited over 16,000 patients. 

The scientists behind the trial, who are looking into a range of potential treatment for coronavirus, said that the trial would include the drug, which is commonly used as a blood thinner. The researchers noted that COVID-19 patients are at a higher risk of blood clots forming the blood vessels. They said that platelets, small cell fragments in the blood that stop bleeding, seem to be hyperreactive in COVID-19 and may be involved in the clotting complications. Since aspirin is an antiplatelet agent, “it may reduce the risk of blood clots in patients with COVID-19,” the researchers said. 

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Professor Peter Horby, the co-Chief Investigator of the RECOVERY trial, said, “We felt it was particularly important to add aspirin to the trial since there is a clear rationale for believing that it might be beneficial and it is safe, inexpensive and widely available. We are looking for medicines for COVID-19 that can be used immediately by anyone, anywhere in the world. We do not know if aspirin is such medicine but we will find out”. 

2,000 patients to get aspirin 

According to the official website, nearly 2,000 patients are expected to randomly get 150 mg of aspirin daily along with the usual regimen. The data from those patients will then be compared with at least 2,000 other patients who received the standard COVID-19 trial treatment on its own. The main outcome RECOVERY will then assess morality after 28 days. 

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Aspirin is widely used to prevent blood clots in many other conditions, including heart attack, stroke, and pre-eclampsia in pregnant women. But, Professor Martin Landray, who co-leads the RECOVERY trial, said that enrolling patients in a randomised trial such as RECOVERY is the only way to assess whether there are clear benefits for patients with COVID-19 and whether those benefits outweigh any potential side effects such as the risk of bleeding. The UK officials further informed that the decision to add aspirin to the trial was made by the University of Oxford researchers leading the trial in conjunction with the Chief Medical Officer, following a recommendation by the COVID-19 Therapeutics Advisory Panel. 

Meanwhile, other treatments being tested in the RECOVERY trial include Azithromycin (a commonly used antibiotic), Tocilizumab (an anti-inflammatory treatment given by injection), Convalescent plasma (collected from donors who have recovered from COVID-19 and contains antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus) and REGN-COV2, which is an investigational anti-viral antibody cocktail produced by Regeneron. 

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