Heart Issue After Covid 19 Recovery? Could Covid 19 Cause Heart Problems Permanent?
Heart issue after Covid 19? Could Covid 19 cause heart problems permanent?
A research published in JAMA Cardiology on July 27, 2020 suggest those heart issues could last for months after patients recover from Covid-19. It has sparked concern among cardiologists that the heart complications could be permanent.
There were previous studies have shown that the novel coronavirus is associated with heart damage and cardiac problems in some patients. People with heart conditions, including coronary artery disease and heart failure, have a higher risk of developing a severe case of Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and of dying from the disease than healthy people.
In addition, health care providers and researchers have reported finding elevated heart rates, heart attacks, heart damage, inflammation, and irregular heart rhythms in Covid-19 patients, even among patients who had no prior heart issues.
Researchers have set out to determine just how commonly heart issues among Covid-19 patients occur and whether the effects of the coronavirus on some patients' hearts could last long term.
Could coronavirus heart damage last long term?
In an earlier study published in JAMA Cardiology, researchers analyzed autopsy reports from 39 patients in Germany who had tested positive for the coronavirus between April 8 and April 18. The patients ranged in age from 78 to 89 years, with a median age of 85, and pneumonia was the listed cause of death for 35 of the patients.
The researchers found that 24 of the patients had some level of the novel coronavirus in the muscles surrounding their hearts, and 16 of those patients had high levels of the virus in those muscles. Further, those 16 patients showed evidence of elevated cytokine response—based on a panel of six proinflammatory genes—when compared with 15 patients with no detected levels of the coronavirus in their heart muscles, according to the study.
However, the researchers wrote that although they observed a "response" to the coronavirus infection among patients with high levels of the virus in the muscles surrounding their hearts, "this was not associated with an influx of inflammatory cells."
Dirk Westermann, a cardiologist at the University Heart and Vascular Centre, who was involved in the study, explained that he and his colleagues found "signs of viral replication" in patients who were "heavily infected" with the coronavirus, but he added that scientists still "don't know the long-term consequences of the changes in gene expression."
Separately, researchers in a second study published on July 27 in JAMA Cardiology analyzed cardiac MRIs from 100 people in Germany who recovered from Covid-19, as well as cardiac MRIs from 100 people who had not been infected with the coronavirus. The patients ranged in age from 45 to 53 years, with a median age of 49.
The researchers found that the MRIs from many people in the group of recovered Covid-19 patients showed evidence of cardiac issues two months after the patients had recovered from the disease. Among that group, 78 patients experienced structural changes to their hearts, 76 showed evidence of a cardiac injury like those typically seen after a heart attack, and 60 had signs of inflammation of the heart.
Overall, the researchers said MRIs from patients who had been infected with the coronavirus were more likely to show signs of heart problems than patients who hadn't been infected with the virus.