Countries that had controlled the pandemic now fight for outbreaks 1:22
(CNN Spanish) –– In this episode, Dr. Elmer Huerta explains the results of two important studies published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Cardiology that describe the damage caused by the new coronavirus in heart health.
You can listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform, or read the transcript below.
Hello, I am Dr. Elmer Huerta and this is your daily dose of information about the new coronavirus, information that we hope will be useful to take care of your health and that of your family. Today we will see what are the damages caused by the new coronavirus to the heart, and if it is true that covid-19 could be a cardiovascular disease, rather than respiratory.
As the days go by, more knowledge is produced regarding the infection caused by the new coronavirus.
We have already reviewed in previous episodes that, from being considered an eminently respiratory disease - to the point that some called it “Wuhan pneumonia” at first, because of where the first reports came from -, scientists have discovered that the covid-19 is a multisystemic disease, capable of affecting multiple organs at the same time.
And the reason for this multiplicity of attacks is because the virus enters the cells through a receptor located - in addition to many tissues - in the lining of blood vessels, which are obviously located in all the organs of the body.
Theoretically then, the new coronavirus could attack any body tissue that has blood vessels in its structure. Is that why, then, that more and more organs attacked by the virus are being discovered every day?
Two major studies have been published in the last few days in the Journal of the American Medical Association Cardiology, which describe the damage caused by the new coronavirus to heart health.
The first, by German and Italian authors, was made to evaluate by nuclear magnetic resonance how the heart had remained in 100 people who had passed the infection. Remember that nuclear magnetic resonance or MRI is an imaging exam that does not use X-rays and that provides detailed internal images of the organs, in this case, the heart.
What they found was somewhat disturbing. Of the 100 patients examined, with an average age of 49 years and equally distributed between men and women, 78 presented some type of cardiac damage after infection, damage that in 60 of them was located in the heart muscle or myocardium, causing what is called inflammation of the heart or myocarditis. What is striking is that this damage was independent both of the medical history of the people, as well as the severity of the covid-19 or the time when the infection was diagnosed (that is, if it was made early or late).
The second study was autopsy in 39 older patients, with a mean age of 85 years, and who died from covid-19. This focused on the analysis of the heart, discovering something very puzzling, and that is that although SARS CoV2 was found in the heart tissue of 24 of the 39 cases, those tissues did not show a clear cellular inflammatory phenomenon.
In other words, what was seen is that the virus can directly attack heart cells, and that the reason why no signs of tissue inflammation were seen could be explained by the advanced age of the patients.
In an editorial accompanying the publications, the authors consider that as the cardiac involvement caused by the virus is better understood, damage to the heart muscle and heart failure are likely to be the complications that we should expect in the future.
In the meantime, we remind you that - until we have an effective vaccine or medicine available - the use of a mask, keeping a distance of at least two meters with other people and washing your hands frequently are the best way to fight against infection with the new coronavirus.
Send me your questions on Twitter, we will try to answer them in our next episodes. You can find me at @Drhuerta.
If you think this podcast is useful, please help others find it by rating and reviewing it in your favorite podcast app. We'll be back tomorrow so be sure to subscribe to get the latest episode on your account.
And for the most up-to-date information, you can always go to CNNEspanol.com. Thanks for your attention.
If you have any questions, you can send them to Dr. Elmer Huerta through Twitter. You can also go to CNNE.com/coronaviruspodcast for all the episodes of our podcast “Coronavirus: Reality vs. fiction".
Heart heart disease