Coronavirus can leave the heart with lasting and dangerous damage, two new studies suggest.
It became clear that the respiratory virus also attacks the cardiovascular system, as well as numerous other organs, including the kidneys and the brain, but new studies shed light on troubling damage to the heart.
A German study found that 78 percent of patients who recovered from COVID-19 were left with structural changes in their heart, and 76 of the 100 survivors showed signs of the type of damage a heart attack leaves.
A second study, also conducted in Germany, found that more than half of the people who died after contracting COVID-19 had high levels of the virus in their hearts.
It is not yet clear how long the damage could last, or how it could, in practice, increase the risks of heart attack, stroke or other life-threatening cardiovascular problems, but studies may help explain why even Previously healthy survivors remain weak and fatigued for weeks or months.
Beyond that, the authors and experts also urge that doctors may need to monitor the heart health of COVID-19 patients long after they have cleared the virus.
The arrows point to areas of the hearts of the coronavirus survivors that became thicker and more inflamed after infection. The study found blood markers in these survivors that are usually only seen after someone suffers.
Led by researchers at the University Hospital Frankfurt in Germany, the first study examined heart health measures in 100 people who had survived the coronavirus infection.
Fifty of the study participants were healthy before contracting coronavirus. Another 57 who were similar (in terms of age, race, and gender) had risk factors for heart problems.
The researchers were able to see signs of heart damage on the MRI images of 78 of the 100 survivors.
Nearly the same 76 percent had high levels of a protein called troponin, comparable to what you see in a person who has had a heart attack.
Sixty of the participants had signs of heart inflammation, despite the fact that it had been 71 days, on average, since they had been diagnosed with coronavirus.
In the second study, researchers from the Cardiac and Vascular Center at the University of Hamburg, Germany analyzed the heart tissue of 39 people who died after contracting coronavirus. Of those 39, COVID-19 pneumonia was listed as the cause of death for 35.
The patients’ hearts were not damaged or infected enough to qualify for acute myocarditis, a severe viral infection of the heart, with most having clear signs that the virus had reached their hearts.
Scientists found viruses in heart tissue taken from 24 of the coronavirus victims.
Sixteen had high concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 in their hearts, and the scientists found signs that the virus was actively replicating within the tissue until the patients died.
Doctors in the United States have noted a disturbing trend of heart problems in patients with coronavirus.
Even young people with no history of high blood pressure or other risk factors have suffered heart attacks and strokes at alarming rates after contracting coronavirus.
But the effects of coronavirus on the body have been shown to be so disparate and widespread, often involving a ripple effect of problems, that it remains difficult to say whether the virus is directly affecting the heart.
With the new pair of studies, it begins to seem like the attacks may be more direct than previously thought.
“These new findings provide intriguing evidence that COVID-19 is associated with at least some component of myocardial injury, perhaps as a result of direct viral infection of the heart,” wrote cardiologists at Northwestern University and UCLA, Dr Clyde Yancy and Dr. Gregg Fonarow in an editorial accompanying the studies in JAMA Cardiology.
“We see the plot thicken, and we are inclined to raise a new and very apparent concern that COVID-19-related cardiomyopathy and heart failure may potentially evolve as the natural history of this infection becomes clear.”
They added that if more research continues to provide similar results, the COVID-19 pandemic could trigger a wave of heart problems in the future.
If that happens, “then the COVID-19 crisis will not decrease, but will shift to a new de novo incidence of heart failure and other chronic cardiovascular complications,” the commenters wrote.
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