Evidence that the heart can take a major hit in patients hospitalized with COVID-19, especially those already with cardiovascular disease (CV) or its risk factors, has been sadly apparent from the pandemic’s earliest days.
Less clear from case studies and small series to date has been whether SARS-CoV-2 directly attacks the heart and whether acute cardiac effects of the illness may lead to some kind of lingering cardiomyopathy.
The field’s grasp of those issues advanced a bit in two new reports published July 27 in JAMA Cardiology that seem to validate concerns the virus can infect the myocardium, without necessarily causing myocarditis and the possibility that some “recovered” patients may be left with persisting myocardial injury and inflammation that potentially could later manifest as heart failure.
Persisting inflammation by cardiac magnetic resonance
A prospective cohort study with 100 patients recovered from a recent bout of the disease showed evidence of ventricular dysfunction, greater ventricular mass, and in 78% of the cohort, signs of myocardial inflammation by cardiac magnetic resonance (CMR) imaging. The CMR findings correlated with elevations in troponin T by high-sensitivity assay (hs-TnT).
Two-thirds of the cohort, whose acute COVID-19 severity had “ranged from asymptomatic to minor-to-moderate symptoms,” had recovered at home, whereas the remaining “severely unwell patients” had been hospitalized, wrote the authors, led by Valentina O. Püntmann, MD, PhD, University Hospital Frankfurt (Germany).
None of the patients had a history of heart failure or cardiomyopathy, although some had hypertension, diabetes, or evidence of coronary disease.
“Our findings demonstrate that participants with a relative paucity of preexisting cardiovascular condition and with mostly home-based recovery had frequent cardiac inflammatory involvement, which was similar to the hospitalized subgroup with regards to severity and extent,” the group noted.
“There is a considerable ongoing myocardial inflammation in the heart muscle weeks after recovery from COVID-19 illness. This finding is important because it may herald a considerable burden of heart failure in a few years down the line,” Dr. Püntmann said in an interview.
Early diagnosis would offer “a good chance that early treatment could reduce the relentless course of inflammatory damage or even halt it,” she said.
“The relatively clear onset of COVID-19 illness provides an opportunity, which we often do not have with other conditions, to take a proactive action and to look for heart involvement early, within a few weeks of recovery.”
Dr. Biykem Bozkurt
The study’s CMR evidence of inflammation edema, scarring, and pericardial effusion are among “the major diagnostic criteria for inflammatory and viral myocarditis,” observed Biykem Bozkurt, MD, PhD, from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, who wasn’t part of either new study.
The findings suggest – consistent with previous evidence – that some patients with recent COVID-19 may be left with ongoing myocardial inflammation, and this study further adds that it could potentially become subacute or even chronic and in some may not be totally reversible, she said in an interview. How long the effects are likely to persist “remains to be determined. We need longer-term outcomes data.”