- A new study finds that about 50% of people hospitalized with severe COVID-19 have evidence of heart damage.
- The researchers investigated patients with COVID-19 who were discharged from care by June 2020 from six hospitals in the UK. The study looked at 148 patients.
- Research
published In July last year, they found that people who had a mild form of COVID-19 could develop heart problems.
Millions of people in the United States have contracted SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID 19, many returning to full health within weeks of getting sick. But for some patients, the side effects of the disease can cause long-term health problems.
A new study finds that about 50% of people hospitalized with severe COVID-19 will show evidence of heart damage – even a few months after recovering from the disease.
Patients with abnormal troponin levels were given an MRI scan of their heart after discharge. The results were compared with those from a control group of patients who did not have COVID-19 and from another 40 healthy volunteers.
The researchers investigated patients with COVID-19 who were discharged from care by June 2020 from six hospitals in the UK.
The study looked at 148 people and is the largest to investigate patients with COVID-19 recovery who have elevated troponin levels. Elevated troponin indicates possible heart problems.
“Troponin is basically a measure of heart muscle damage,” Dr. Andrew M. Freeman, a cardiologist at Colorado Jewish National Health, told Healthline. “So when the heart muscle dies, like during a heart attack or a marked inflammation, and for whatever reason, the heart muscle cells actually burst, releasing an enzyme called troponin.”
Freeman explained that when someone comes to the emergency room with chest pain, hospital staff will often test their blood for troponin to see if there has been a heart attack or heart muscle injury.
“Elevated troponin levels are associated with poorer outcomes in patients with COVID-19,” said Dr. Marianna Fontana, lead co-researcher and professor of cardiology at University College London, in a statement.
During severe COVID-19 disease, the heart can be directly affected, Fontana said.
“Discovering how the heart can be damaged is difficult,” she continued. But MRI scans of the heart can identify different patterns of lesions, which can allow us to make more accurate diagnoses and target treatments more effectively. ”
Research
The researchers in the study used cardiac MRI to examine the hearts of 100 German citizens who had recovered from COVID-19.
Of these participants, 78 had heart problems and 60 had ongoing cardiac muscle inflammation.
According to the study, the findings were independent of the length of time after an original diagnosis, pre-existing conditions or the severity of the disease and the general evolution.
Making the findings difficult to specifically associate with COVID-19 is that people at the highest risk of severe COVID are those with chronic medical conditions that are often specifically related to the heart. Fontana said these conditions include diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity.
Dr. Rachel-Maria Brown Talaska, director of cardiac hospitalization at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, said that in addition to the pre-existing conditions specified by Fontana, people with severe COVID-19 tend to have coronary heart disease and congestive heart failure.
“Most patients hospitalized with COVID-19 have a chronic medical condition,” she said.
The left ventricle of the heart, the chamber responsible for pumping oxygenated blood to all parts of the body, was normal in nearly 90 percent of the 148 study participants, according to the study.
However, scarring or damage to the heart muscle itself was present in about half of the participants.
The pattern of scarring or injury came from inflammation in 39 patients and from ischemic heart disease, including heart attack (death of heart tissue), in 32 patients, or both in 9 patients. Twelve participants presented evidence of ongoing cardiac inflammation.
“Injuries related to inflammation and heart scarring are common in patients with COVID-19 with an increase in troponin discharged from the hospital,” Fontana said in a statement. “But (it) has a limited extent and has little effect on heart function.”
She concluded that “more work is needed to further investigate this”.
According to Dr. Michael Goyfman, director of clinical cardiology at Long Island Jewish Forest Hills in New York, there is no evidence that COVID-19 causes more heart damage than other infections.
The predominance 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 of the heart and, since COVID is a viral infection, it can also cause it. The rate is probably similar to that for other infections. ”
The number is rising because “COVID is so widespread,” Goyfman continued. “There is no evidence that COVID triggers excess 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 could affect the heart.
“It’s always nice to see what others see and publish this data so we can share our knowledge with the world,” Freeman said. “But I would 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 an extraordinary amount of information about trends.”
New research in the United Kingdom finds that half of study participants hospitalized with severe COVID-19 have heart damage.
Of the 148 participants, the researchers found heart damage caused by inflammation in 39 of these patients, but pointed out that most participants had chronic diseases before COVID-19.
Experts say the small size of the study and the lack of evidence that COVID-19 was directly responsible for heart damage are significant limitations to the study’s findings.