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Until now, Covid-19 has been commonly considered as a lung disease.
Conversely, new studies from the University Clinic in Zurich suggest that the virus attacks the entire cardiovascular system.
This would explain the multi-organ failure repeatedly observed in severe disease courses.
Covid-19 has been called lung disease over and over again. The lung is undoubtedly the most severely affected organ. But doctors have noted for some time that many crown patients die not from lung failure, but from cardiovascular or multi-organ failure.
Until now, these have been seen primarily as complications of typical Covid 19 severe pneumonia. But a group of pathologists at Zurich University Hospital led by Professor Zsuzsanna Varga have now noted that patients with corona not only suffer from inflammation of the lungs, but also inflammation of the entire endothelium.
The endothelium is a layer of cells on the inner surface of the blood and lymphatic vessels and is therefore present throughout the cardiovascular system. It acts as a protective shield for the vessels. If this function is altered, circulatory disorders in the organs and tissues of the body can occur, which in turn leads to cell death and therefore to the death of the corresponding organs and tissues.
“… we should now describe the clinical picture as Covid endothelitis”
Scientists around Zsuzsanna Varga have now managed to detect SARS-CoV-2 viruses in the tissue of patients who died of Covid-19 directly on the endothelium. The researchers concluded that the virus not only attacks the host’s body as expected through the ACE2 receptors in the lungs, but through the entire endothelium. Wherever the researchers looked: the heart, brain, lung, intestine and kidney vessels were affected, they report in the famous magazine “The Lancet”.
“With our research, we were able to test our hypothesis that Covid-19 can affect not only the lungs but also the vessels of all organs,” said Professor Frank Ruschitzka, director of cardiology at the Zurich clinic and one of the authors of the study. “Covid is a systemic vascular inflammation, we should now describe the clinical picture as Covid endotheliitis.”
This explains the typical clinical picture, which can lead to circulatory disorders in the heart, pulmonary embolism, and vascular occlusions in the brain and intestinal tract, which can ultimately lead to fatal multi-organ failure.
The same patients belong to the risk group.
Patients with high blood pressure, diabetes, heart failure, or coronary heart disease have in common that their endothelial function is restricted.
Therefore, they all still belong to the risk group, because the virus further attacks already weakened endothelial function. For the same reason, young patients without previous illnesses experience less frequent serious illnesses.
For Frank Ruschitzka, this means: “We have to inhibit the multiplication of viruses in their most proliferating phase and at the same time protect and stabilize the patient’s vascular system. This particularly affects our patients with cardiovascular disease and known restricted endothelial function. “
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