COVID can lead to more severe and long-term cardiovascular diseases, finds new study

In the ongoing debates and discussions around the effect of COVID on heart health, another research study has come up with stronger revelations. "University of Queensland researchers have discovered how COVID-19 damages the heart, opening the door to future treatments," an official statement from the University has said.

Meanwhile, doctors and health experts have seen a rise in heart diseases post COVID. Many have also estimated a link between COVID vaccine and the rising incidences of heart related complications.

Read: British Indian cardiologist links father's sudden death to Pfizer vaccination; calls vaccine misinformation "the greatest miscarriage of medical science"

“In comparison to the 2009 flu pandemic, COVID has led to more severe and long-term cardiovascular disease but what was causing that at a molecular level wasn’t known,” Dr Arutha Kulasinghe, a part of the research team said.

“During our study, we couldn’t detect viral particles in the cardiac tissues of COVID-19 patients, but what we found was tissue changes associated with DNA damage and repair. DNA damage and repair mechanisms foster genomic instability and are related to chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, atherosclerosis and neurodegenerative disorders, so understanding why this is happening in COVID-19 patients is important,” he explains.

The study was done using actual cardiac tissues collected during autopsies from seven COVID patients from Brazil, two people who died from influenza and six control patients.

The researchers found that while influenza caused excess inflammation, COVID attacked the heart's DNA. “When we looked at the influenza cardiac tissue samples, we identified that it caused excess inflammation, Whereas we found COVID-19 attacked the heart’s DNA – probably directly and not just as a knock-on from inflammation," the researchers have said.

Pandemic H1N1 influenza drives a cytokine storm of generalized inflammation disrupting the heart which presents with fever, tachycardia, and arrhythmias. In contrast, COVID-19 drives a now recognized syndrome which can result in acute myocardial infarction, myocardial injury, heart failure, disseminated thrombosis, hypotension, arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death, the study emphasizes.

“Our study has highlighted that the two viruses appear to affect cardiac tissue very differently, which we want to get a better understanding of in larger cohort studies. What we have categorically shown is that COVID is not ‘just like the flu’," the researchers have said and added that this study helps us understand how COVID-19 affects that heart, and that is the first step in working out what treatments might be best to repair that heart.

With this it seems evident that in comparison with the 2009 pandemic (pH1N1), SARS-CoV-2 infection is likely to lead to more severe disease, with multi-organ effects, including cardiovascular disease.

Several research studies have worked and confirmed that myocarditis, or the inflammation of heart muscle is very commonly seen in people during and after COVID.

Apart from painful symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath, irregular heart rhythms, myocarditis puts the body in a complicated and risky condition by reducing the heart's ability to pump blood.

Contrary to what it was initially thought of as, COVID is not just a respiratory illness. The ability of the virus to attach to the receptor cells of the organs is a major headache for health experts. Several complications related to stomach, kidney and liver are also being reported post-COVID.

Long COVID risk has also posed a greater challenge for medical care as it is confirmed that the virus and its effect linger in the body for several months after the infection.