Two compelling publications appear to implicate lupus anticoagulant as a key factor in prolonged PTT results documented in seriously ill Covid victims. These could account for prolonged PTTs in the absence of hemorrhage. They are: Bowles L, Platton S, Yartey N, et al. Lupus anticoagulant and abnormal coagulation
tests in patients with Covid-19. Downloaded from nejm.org on May 6, 2020 and Harzallah I, Drenou B, Debliquis A. Lupus anticoagulant is frequent in patients with Covid-19. J Thromb Haemostas doi: 10.1111/JTH.14867. Thanks to Dean Willett and Ali Sadeghi-Khomami, Precision BioLogic for the information.
May 6 2020
Comments (1)
Factor Assays
Dear George,
Dear George,
Lupus anticoagulant (LAC) assay has also been performed in dozens of our COVID-19 patients, however, very few of them got positive results, I don’t think that antiphospholipid antibody exists universally in COVID-19 patients. False positive results due to interference of anticoagulants may be an important reason for the high positive rate of LAC mentioned in these papers, the timing of collecting samples should be given attention.
I have responded to the letter from Harzallah I, et al. on JTH.
Ning Tang