Apixaban, an orally available anticoagulant, inhibits SARS-CoV-2 replication and its major protease in a non-competitive way
by Otávio Augusto Chaves et al.The severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is associated with coagulopathy. Anticoagulants, such as low-molecular-weight heparin, warfarin, thrombin inhibitors, and factor Xa (FXa) inhibitors, are thus recommended by the American Society of Hematology and National Institutes of Health for COVID-19 patients (Wenzler et al., 2020; Adam et al., 2021). Clinical trials with anticoagulants have shown the increased survival of critically ill COVID-19 patients under non-invasive and invasive ventilatory assistance (Wenzler et al., 2020; Adam et al., 2021), along with decreased consumption of platelets and clotting factors and a reduced risk of hemorrhage (Adam et al., 2021). Among the anti-clotting agents, early use of orally available FXa and thrombin inhibitors (Chowdhury et al., 2020; Rentsch et al., 2021) prevented high levels of D-dimer, which is the final product from the clotting/fibrinolysis cascade and is directly implicated with severe COVID-19 (Rentsch et al., 2021). (continues)