- A new study found that about 50 percent of people hospitalized with severe COVID-19 have evidence of heart damage.
- Researchers examined patients with COVID-19 who were discharged from hospital by six hospitals in the UK by June 2020. The study examined 148 patients.
- Research
published in July last year, people experiencing a mild form of COVID-19 may develop heart problems.
Millions of people in the United States contracted SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID 19, and within a few weeks of becoming ill, they returned to full health. But for some patients, the adverse effects of the disease can cause long-term problems.
A new study found that about 50 percent of people hospitalized with severe COVID-19 will show evidence of heart damage – even months after recovering from the disease.
Patients with abnormal troponin levels were offered after MRI scan of their heart. The results were compared with those of a control group of patients who did not have COVID-19 and of an additional 40 healthy volunteers.
Researchers have examined patients with COVID-19 who were discharged from hospital by six hospitals in the UK by June 2020.
The study examined 148 people and is the largest one examining patients with COVID-19 with elevated troponin levels. Elevated troponin indicates possible heart problems.
“Troponin is basically a measure of heart muscle damage,” said Dr. Andrew M. Freeman, a cardiologist at National Jewish Health in Colorado, told Healthline. “When heart muscle dies, such as during a heart attack or severe inflammation, and for whatever reason, the heart muscle cells actually burst, releasing an enzyme called troponin.”
Freeman explained that hospital staff regularly test blood for troponin to see if there is a heart attack or heart muscle damage if someone comes to the emergency room with chest pain.
“Elevated troponin levels are associated with worse outcomes in COVID-19 patients,” said Dr. Marianna Fontana, co-principal investigator of the study and professor of cardiology at University College London, said in a statement.
Fontana directly affected the heart during severe COVID-19 disease.
“It’s hard to figure out how the heart can be damaged,” she continued. “But MRI scans of the heart can identify different injury patterns, enabling us to make more accurate diagnoses and target treatments more effectively.”
Research
Researchers in the study used cardiac MRI to examine the hearts of 100 German citizens who had recovered from COVID-19.
Of the participants, 78 showed heart problems, and 60 had persistent myocarditis.
According to the study, the findings were independent of the length of time after an original diagnosis, existing conditions or the severity and general course of the disease.
To make the findings difficult to associate specifically with COVID-19 is that people at greatest risk for severe COVID are those with chronic medical conditions that are often specifically heart-related. Fontana said these conditions include diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.
Dr. Rachel-Maria Brown Talaska, director of cardiac services at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said people with severe COVID-19, in addition to the existing conditions specified by Fontana, also have coronary artery disease and congestive heart disease. heart failure.
“A majority of hospital patients with COVID-19 have a chronic medical illness,” she said.
The left ventricle of the heart, the chamber responsible for pumping oxygen-like blood to all parts of the body, was, according to the study, nearly 90 percent of the 148 participants in the study.
However, scars or injury to the heart muscle itself were present in about half of the participants.
The pattern of scars or injuries is due to inflammation in 39 patients and to ischemic heart disease, including infarction (death of heart tissue), in 32 patients, or both in 9 patients. Twelve participants showed evidence of persistent heart inflammation.
“Inflammation-related injuries and scarring of the heart are common in COVID-19 patients with troponin elevation discharged from the hospital,” Fontana said in a statement. “But (it) is limited and has little effect on the function of the heart.”
She concluded that “more work is needed to investigate this further.”
According to Dr. Michael Goyfman, director of clinical cardiology at the Long Island Jewish Forest Hills in New York, there is evidence that COVID-19 causes more heart damage than other infections.
“The dominance of evidence so far shows that COVID does not really cause excessive heart damage compared to other infections,” he said. ‘Viral infections can generally cause inflammation in the heart, and since COVID is a viral infection, it can. The rate is probably the same as for other infections. ”
The numbers are increasing because ‘COVID is so common’, Goyfman continued. “There is no evidence that COVID causes more heart attacks than other viral diseases.”
Freeman believes the number of people in the study was too small to give a clear picture of how COVID-19 can affect the heart.
“It’s always nice to see what others see and publish the data to share knowledge with the world,” Freeman said. “But I agree that it is a relatively small sample size.”
He noted that if you look at the hundreds of thousands of people who have had COVID-19, even in the United States, ‘you know that a sample of 148 does not give you a huge amount of trend information.’
New research from the UK finds that half of the participants in the study who were hospitalized with severe COVID-19 show heart damage.
Of 148 participants, researchers found that heart damage was caused by inflammation in 39 of the patients, but emphasized that most participants had chronic diseases before COVID-19.
Experts believe the small study size and the lack of evidence that COVID-19 was directly responsible for heart damage are significant limitations to the study’s findings.