Highlights
- This meta-trial is a prospective individual patient data meta-analysis
of randomised trials and early phase studies, to determine whether a
biologically plausible intervention improves outcomes in hospitalised
patients with COVID-19.
- In previous pre-pandemic clinical trials, nebulised unfractionated
heparin limits lung injury progression and the development of ARDS and
accelerates recovery in mechanically ventilated patients with, or at
risk of, acute respiratory distress syndrome.
- The pragmatic pre-specified meta-analysis design effectively deals
with recruitment difficulties that could occur in individual studies
given the uncertainties of the international dynamics of the COVID-19
pandemic. It also allows smaller feasibility/safety studies to be
included in this analysis.
- Individual studies contributing to the meta-trial are conducted in
multiple countries, which improves effect size estimates across
different conditions as well as the external validity of the
results.