A major contributing factor to this is the increased tendency of the patient's blood to thicken and the production of blood clots which can lead to heart failure, strokes, kidney failure and when formed in the lung, respiratory system failure.ĪM: What have studies shown so far about the effect of SARS-CoV-2 infection on PV?īB: The doctors at Emory believe that the inflammation caused by the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infection causes the hyperviscosity (high PV), which may contribute to blood clots in some patients. The majority of deaths attributed to COVID-19 are not respiratory but predominantly due to organ failure. Emory also found that patients with the highest viscosity levels were more likely to have blood coagulation problems e.g. Fibrinogen is a key building block for making blood clots. Research identified that these patients had a high PV.ĪM: What can cause PV to rise above normal levels? What are the downstream effects of a raised PV?īB: The doctors at Emory University found that COVID-19 patients had extremely high levels of fibrinogen, a large protein that increases the blood plasma viscosity when in a high concentration. Most recently, doctors at Emory University in the USA established that many COVID-19 patients had unusual blood clotting that failed to respond as expected to anti-clotting medication. Increased plasma viscosity is an indicator for potential stroke and heart attack: these are induced by a low flow of blood in the capillaries leading to an inadequate delivery of vital oxygen and nutrients to body tissues.Ī high plasma viscosity (hyperviscosity) can be linked to blood cancers including polycythemia, macroglobulinemia, multiple myeloma, and leukaemia. To learn more about plasma viscosity and how it can be measured, as well as understand how this information could potentially be used to help diagnose and treat COVID-19 patients, Technology Networks spoke with Bernie Benson, MD of Benson Viscometers.Īnna MacDonald (AM): What is plasma viscosity (PV)?īernie Benson (BB): Put simply, it is a liquid's resistance to flow, often it is referred to as the thickness of a liquid, in this case, blood plasma.

Following the recent publication of a study from Emory University that found elevated plasma viscosity levels in critically ill COVID-19 patients, a number of investigations are currently underway to understand the links between blood plasma thickness and COVID-19 severity.

Blood plasma viscosity