BREAKING! COVID-19 Heart Issues: Doctors Shocked By Autopsies Of COVID-19 Patients Revealing Unique Heart Damage
Source: COVID-19 Heart Issues Jul 22, 2020 4 years, 5 months, 14 hours, 25 minutes ago
COVID-19 Heart Issues: Autopsies of COVID-19 patients by
researchers from the department of pathology at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans have revealed shocking damage to the hearts of COVID-19 patients that are not expected from typical inflammation of the heart muscle associated with myocarditis. Rather there was a unique pattern of cell death in scattered individual heart muscle cells.
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The researchers are calling for urgent research to truly understand the mechanism and cellular processes or pathways involved in these unique damages in order to find a solution to treat COVID-19 patients as the numbers of COVID-19 patients dying from heart failure and other cardiology –related issues are fast increasing in recent weeks.
The research finds from the autopsies were published in the journal: Circulation which is the official journal of the American Heart Association.
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.120.049465
The researchers report the findings of a detailed study of hearts from 22 deaths confirmed due to COVID-19 in the journal.
Dr Richard Vander Heide, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Director of Pathology Research at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine told Thailand Medical News, “We identified key gross and microscopic changes that challenge the notion that typical myocarditis is present in severe SARS-CoV-2 infection. While the mechanism of cardiac injury in COVID-19 is unknown, we propose several theories that bear further investigation that will lead to greater understanding and potential treatment interventions.”
The study team of
Louisiana State University (LSU) Health pathologists led by Dr Vander Heide, an experienced cardiovascular pathologist, also found that unlike the first SARS coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 was not present in heart muscle cells. Nor were there occluding blood clots in the coronary arteries.
The team previously reported results revealed diffuse alveolar damage (DAD) damage to the small airspaces of the lung where gas exchange occurs along with blood clots and bleeding in the small blood vessels and capillaries of the lung, were the major contributors to death.
Dr Sharon Fox, MD, PhD, Associate Director of Research and Development in the Department of Pathology at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine added, “These findings, along with severely enlarged right ventricles, may indicate extreme stress on the heart secondary to acute pulmonary disease.”
The heart autopsies, believed to be some of the first reported from the US, were conducted on 22 patients who died of COVID-19 at University Medical Center in New Orleans. The majority were African American. The ten male and twelve female patients ranged in age from 44-79. Although there were other underlying conditions, the majority had high blood pressure, half had insulin-treated type 2 diabetes, and about 41% had obesity.
The
Louisiana State University (LSU Health) pathologists, as have others, also found viral infection of some of the cells in the lining of the smaller blood vessels
(endothelium). Although at low levels, it may be enough to cause dysfunction leading to individual cell death. The effects of the so-called “cytokine storm” (severe overreaction of the immune system cells fighting the infection) associated with COVID may also play a role.
Dr Vander Heide added, “Given that inflammatory cells can pass through the heart without being present in the tissue proper, a role for cytokine-induced endothelial damage cannot be ruled out.”
Previously, medical experts and cardiologists only thought that myocarditis and pericarditis are just the two main issues affecting the hearts of COVID-19 patients as a result of the viral infection but these new revelations shows that heart damage in COVID-19 patients is more complicated and that many things and factors are at play at one time.
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Read Also:
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-covid-19-news-study-shows-39-percent-of-covid-19-recovered-healthcare-workers-developed-pericarditis-or-and-myocarditis-10-weeks-later-when-e
And
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/covid-19-heart-issues-researchers-confirm-sars-cov-2-virus-attacks-heart-directly-via-ace-2-receptors-found-in-cardiomyocytes
