New nference Study Reveals Mortality and Racial Disparities in COVID-19 Anticoagulant Treatments

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., March 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- nference, the AI-driven health technology company, today announced publication in EClinicalMedicine of "Enoxaparin is associated with lower rates of thrombosis, kidney injury, and mortality than Unfractionated Heparin in hospitalized COVID patients", indicating hospitalized COVID-19 patients at Mayo Clinic treated with the anticoagulant heparin (unfractionated) have a 4.3 times higher mortality risk than patients treated with the anticoagulant enoxaparin (low molecular weight heparin). An additional study of the largest ICU dataset, accepted by Journal of Medical Virology, "Healthcare disparities among anticoagulation therapies for severe COVID-19 patients in the multi-site VIRUS registry", reveals disparities between which medicines were most often prescribed to black and white patients.

EClinicalMedicine is a peer-reviewed clinical journal from The Lancet that publishes original research to help frontline health professionals navigate the complex and rapid health transitions facing societies worldwide.

Journal of Medical Virology is a peer-reviewed publication of original scientific papers on fundamental as well as applied research concerning viruses affecting humans.

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, infected patients are at an increased risk of thrombosis and various anticoagulants are used as a blood thinner in patient management, without an established standard-of-care. As described in the paper published in EClinicalMedicine, nference employed state-of-the-art neural networks to analyze the complete electronic health records (EHRs) of 607 hospitalized Mayo Clinic COVID-19 patients treated with either enoxaparin or unfractionated heparin, but not both.

Findings indicate stark and statistically significant differences in mortality between these two therapies in severe COVID-19 cases; after weighting for potential confounders, those administered unfractionated heparin have a 16% mortality rate compared to those administered enoxaparin, who have a 3.7% mortality rate.

"There is currently no standard of care for COVID-associated coagulopathy," said Venky Soundararajan, PhD, co-founder and chief scientific officer of nference. "The significant superiority we have found of enoxaparin over unfractionated heparin and the subsequent large gap in mortality emphasizes the need to make our results widely known, so that further investigation can examine the underlying causes and lead to more effective patient care."

In the paper published in the Journal of Medical Virology, nference artificial intelligence (AI) was employed to analyze data from severe COVID patients who were hospitalized or admitted to the ICU in the Society for Critical Care Medicine's VIRUS registry, a large-scale, international, multi-site study of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Researchers found that unfractionated heparin is more likely to be used than enoxaparin in cases of black patients with severe COVID-19.

"It is notable that the costs of enoxaparin remain significantly higher than unfractionated heparin," said Soundararajan. "While retrospective studies cannot suggest any causality, these findings motivate the need for follow-up research to elucidate any inherent biases in anticoagulant use that are bound to amplify the negative effects of COVID on our world."

The innovative and powerful AI technology implemented by nference on vast amounts of biomedical data during the COVID-19 pandemic has enabled discoveries with a wide range of implications that contribute to a greater understanding of the virus and, ultimately, are advancing patient care. 

About nference
Through its powerful augmented intelligence software nferX®, nference is transforming health care by making biomedical knowledge computable. Its partnership with Mayo Clinic has given nference an opportunity to synthesize more than 100 years of institutional knowledge, producing real-world evidence in real time by converting large amounts of data into deep insights to advance discovery and development of diagnostics and therapeutics. nference is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Follow nference on LinkedIn and Twitter. Visit us at nference.ai.

SOURCE nference