(Newser)
– A study of 100 recovered COVID patients in Germany has a sobering result: months after having the virus, their hearts showed persistent damage from the virus. MRIs of their hearts found that 78% exhibited visual signs that the virus had impacted the organ; 60% showed evidence of inflammation. This, although none of the patients believed that something was wrong with their hearts, according to STAT. NBC News also notes that none of the 100 had pre-existing conditions that would explain heart damage, and 67% of patients had mild cases of coronavirus and were not hospitalized during their illness. “Our findings may provide an indication of [a] potentially considerable burden of inflammatory disease in large and growing parts of the population, “the study authors wrote.
What is unknown is what happens in the long term, but in an editorial accompanying the Jamaica In the study, Dr. Clyde Yancy and Dr. Gregg Fonarow write that “once the heart muscle has been injured, there is the possibility of progressive injury … We see that the weft thickens and we are inclined to propose a New and very obvious concern that COVID-19-related cardiomyopathy and heart failure may potentially evolve as the natural history of this infection becomes clear. ” They say they don’t want to “create additional anxiety,” but hope to stimulate further analysis of COVID’s impact on the heart. (Read more coronavirus stories.)
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