Various medical circumstances, including heart attacks and extreme cases of COVID-19, necessitate the use of anticoagulants, medicines that prevent blood clots. But the most commonly used, heparin, can induce potentially fatal side effects by making the blood clots worse rather than better. This only happens in a minority of patients so effective treatments are not commonly explored. Researchers have now proposed a side effect-free anticoagulating treatment that has so far proved effective in test mice and could be ready for human trials in just a few years.
