Is COVID-19 bad for your heart? A new study finds heart muscle damage in COVID patients

Scientists have been raising concerns about the rise in cardiovascular disease among COVID-19 patients for months, long after the SARS-CoV-2 virus has cleared their bodies. These heart problems have long been part of the larger conversation about the long-term consequences of COVID-19, with a June Department of Veterans Affairs study even finding that those who contracted COVID-19 again were twice as likely to either die or have a heart attack than people who have only been infected once.

Now, a new study in the journal Immunology uses a technique known as spatial transcriptomics – which allows scientists to directly map how genes are expressed on tissues – to study the unique effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus on human organs uncover. The study compared SARS-CoV-2 to the H1N1 influenza virus that caused the pandemic in 2009.

Unfortunately, the evidence also suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 virus damages human organs more severely and for a longer period of time compared to H1N1.

In the study, the scientists examined and compared heart tissue from people who had died from both diseases and a group of control patients. While the COVID-19 patients didn’t have the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself in their heart tissue, the heart muscles showed signs of DNA damage that was unique to them — and completely different from the inflammatory signal seen in influenza patients. In contrast, COVID-19 patients had a suppressed inflammatory signal.

“The two respiratory viruses (COVID and influenza) look very different in the hearts of these patients,” said corresponding author Dr. Arutha Kulasinghe from the University of Queensland Salon via email. “DNA damage is a marker for genomic instability – we have known about it in chronic diseases such as cancer, neurodegenerative diseases and diabetes – but its role in COVID was not known and the clinical implications for it are not clear at this time. “

Kulasinghe expressed concern that her findings could be “the ‘canary in the coal mine,'” revealing that there are fundamental biological differences between how influenza and COVID-19 affect the human heart.

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dr Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease physician and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the study, noted to Salon via email that the study was small, as it only did four autopsies of older COVID-19 patients -19 patients included. 19 patients, all of whom had either underlying heart disease or risk factors for heart disease. Therefore, “This study likely shows that severe COVID-19 can lead to further heart inflammation in patients with underlying heart disease, but does not yet make any conclusions about the effects of COVID-19 on the heart in mild disease or in patients without underlying heart disease Gandhi explained. “This is a ‘hypothesis’ generating study and should prompt us to both further investigate the inflammatory response in COVID-19 and to continue to minimize serious illness from SARS-CoV-2 with vaccines and therapeutics.”

dr Georges Benjamin — executive director of the American Public Health Association — put the study in context and emailed Salon that “we know very little about the long-term impact of COVID-related heart disease.” We also know even less about how protective vaccines are for specific organ damage. So that’s another important area of ​​research.”

For their part, the scientists behind the Immunology study were modest when describing the breadth of their findings.

“It tells us that COVID and flu affect the heart very differently, with COVID-19 potentially being more damaging (and possibly longer-term),” Kulasinghe told Salon. “More work needs to be done to determine the usefulness of this DNA damage signal (has been identified in severe patients/ICU patients who then died). So what this means for living patients after infection is unknown.”

One possible approach is for scientists to look for the same DNA damage signal found in heart tissue in nasal swabs and blood samples. If the same DNA damage is found there, doctors may be able to help pinpoint possible heart complications well in advance.

Concerns about heart disease and prolonged COVID are part of a broader discussion about the long-term effects of COVID-19. While there are signs that COVID-19 could cause long-term damage to the brain, lungs and other vital organs, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is so new on the scene that scientists cannot confidently assess its long-term effects. The Immunology study notes that the list of cardiac-triggered symptoms associated with initial COVID-19 infections includes myocarditis, palpitations, heart failure and arrhythmias.