POST COVID19 IMPACT ON HEART

A team from the University Heart and Vascular Centre in Hamburg, Germany, after conducting two studies on Covid19 infected patients, published their findings in the journal JAMA Cardiology. One of them was a series of autopsies performed on 39 people who had passed away after having Covid 19. 35 of these patients had succumbed to pneumonia. A majority (61.5%) of these autopsies revealed evidence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in the heart. Of these 24 cases, 16 had more than 1000 copies per microgram of viral RNA, suggesting that there were quite significant amounts of the virus. In fact, in the five cases with the highest viral load, even when the heart didn't go on, the virus did. These viruses were still replicating, which means that they were still reproducing or essentially doing the viral version of the nasty.

The other study was conducted by a team from the University Hospital Frankfurt in Frankfurt am Main, Germany and the Institute for Cardiac Diagnostic and Therapy in Berlin, Germany. They followed up with 100 patients in the State of Hesse who had previously tested positive for the SARS-CoV2. For the study, these patients underwent MRI of their hearts and blood testing to check for evidence of heart damage. This didn't happen right after their Covid 19 diagnosis but a median of 71 days afterwards, which is over two months after the initial diagnosis. These also were people who were still fairly young at heart, literally, with the median age being 49 years old. Nevertheless, the MRIs did show that 78% of the patients had some type of abnormality in their hearts. These ranged from signs of inflammation to enlarged left ventricles to decreased ability of the heart to pump blood to the rest of the body. Many of these findings were consistent with patients having myocarditis or pericarditis. Twelve of the patients in the study had evidence that portions of their heart muscles were not getting enough oxygen. Three patients had such severe abnormalities that they had to undergo biopsies of their heart tissue for a closer look as to what was happening. Samples of their heart tissue revealed active inflammation but no signs of the virus. A majority (76%)  of the patients had detectable troponin in their blood. Troponin is a protein typically found in your heart muscles. When your heart muscles get damaged, troponin can then leak into your bloodstream. Moreover, on the day of MRI, 17 patients were still suffering from chest pain, 20 from heart palpitations and 36 from ongoing shortness of breath and general exhaustion.

These two studies in JAMA Cardiology raise the possibility that the Covid 19 coronavirus could do some serious tearing up of the heart. Could the infection eventually lead to cardiomyopathy (heart muscle problems) and heart failure? Perhaps. Possibly. May be. More studies are necessary to get to the heart of what is still mysterious SARS-CoV2 may end up doing to you.

(*Indebted to the recent article by Bruce Y.Lee, writer, journalist, professor, systems modeler, computational and digital health expert etc. This is just for information purpose only)

KV George

kvgeorgein@gmail.com