New medical reports show that COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) is having a lasting impact on the hearts of some patients. The report confirms the fears of cardiologists who have been concerned about possible long-term heart injury from the coronavirus.
Two German studies, published this week in the peer-reviewed medical journal JAMA Cardiology, indicated heart “abnormalities” in patients with Covid-19 months after recovering from initial symptoms of the disease.
In the initial study, 100 patients from the Covid Registry of the Frankfurt Hospital University, all relatively healthy adults in their 40s and 50s, 1/3 of the patients required hospitalization during their attack with the virus. The others recovered at home.
“The researchers examined cardiac MRI images taken nearly two and a half months after diagnosis and compared them to images of people who never had Covid-19. The study found heart abnormalities in 78 patients, and 60 of them showed signs of inflammation in the heart muscle from the virus. “
Dr. Clyde Yancy, chief cardiologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and editor of JAMA Cardiology, says the team was “impressed” with the findings.
“Inflammation is the first prerequisite for heart failure and, over a longer period of time, could leave significant residual damage that could set the stage for other forms of heart disease.”
He noted that the results would have been virtually impossible to pin down without this study.
“Most of the patients did not show any symptoms and these specific abnormalities detected by the MRI would not have been seen on an echocardiogram … more commonly used in the standard clinical setting.”
Cardiologists suggest that the prevalence of inflammation is an important link to Covid-19, since the disease has a clinical reputation for a high inflammatory response.
“We are not saying that Covid-19 causes heart failure, but it presents early evidence that there is possible injury to the heart.”
Dr. Paul Cremer, a cardiovascular imaging specialist at the Cleveland Clinic, says that while the inflammation is indicative of Covid-19, “… having images before patients were sick could have strengthened the study’s argument that the disease could have caused these heart abnormalities. “
“See inflammation in the heart muscle. It is difficult to think of other causes due to Covid-19, but I think it should be validated in other studies. “
The findings come after a study by the Cleveland Clinic published in the JAMA Network Open medical journal July 9 highlighted a series of cases of “broken heart syndrome” or stress cardiomyopathy, which doubled during the Covid pandemic. -19.
SOURCES: USA Today The | JAMA Network
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