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COVID-19 has killed more than 600,000 Americans, but most people infected with the new disease will survive it.
That said, the potential long-term impact of the respiratory disease worries doctors and medical researchers, although these effects are only partially known at this point, given that the virus has been with us for less than two years.
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Dr April Stempien-Otero, cardiologist at UW Medicine’s Heart Institute in Seattle, says she has seen “significant heart damage” occur in people who have had mild episodes of COVID-19, including some young people .
“It was a big surprise for all of us,” Stempien-Otero told UW Medicine Newsroom in a recently published Q&A. “It wasn’t our high-risk heart population, but in retrospect I think it was only a matter of time before we saw the effects of COVID on people with what we call subclinical heart disease. . “
She said last fall they started seeing a cohort of younger patients – people typically between the ages of 25 and 40 – entering hospitals with heart complications a few weeks after recovering from COVID-19 . It appears that the virus triggered pre-existing heart problems that were unknown to them and which may have developed years or decades later.
“Prediabetes, high blood pressure, mild cardiomyopathy, or genetic issues that didn’t cause problems,” she said.
Why has mild COVID-19 apparently advanced these issues, leading people to hospital? This is primarily the ability of the disease to create severe inflammation.
“We just thought that the inflammatory cells associated with conditions like high blood pressure and heart failure were somehow witnesses and the result of damage that had already occurred, as opposed to actively promoting the disease,” said Stempien-Otero. “COVID has made it clear that these inflammatory cells can be very powerful players in making heart disease worse. “
She added:
“We hypothesize that people with pre-existing heart disease likely have some of these macrophages present in their hearts, which activate with SARS-CoV-2 and cause damage to the heart muscle. … We could therefore consider SARS-CoV-2 as an acceleration of chronic heart disease. SARS-CoV-2 causes another type of inflammation which, in our experience, is more persistent. “
Stempien-Otero says a long-term study needs to be done, although these early signs are worrying.
“The question is, what will happen after SARS-CoV-2 has run its course,” she said. “How much heart muscle will a patient lose due to these inflammatory responses? We don’t make a lot of new heart muscle cells as we get older. And we know that, as with other toxins that kill heart muscle cells, like chemotherapy, if you lose enough of those cells, those areas of tissue are replaced by scar tissue, the heart has to work harder and you. gradually develop heart failure. . “
Read the entire interview.
–Douglas Perry
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