Models show how Corona attacks the heart: "Completely different quality"

Created: 12/24/2021, 9:51 PM

From: Julia Volkenand

Vascular network (red) in healthy heart tissue (left) and in severe cases of Covid-19 (right).

The misdirected new formation of the network as a result of Covid-19 results in numerous branches, ramifications and even loops in the capillaries, which can be mathematically analyzed by counts.

© IMAGO / Panthermedia / M.

Reichardt, P. Møller Jensen, T. Salditt (collage)

In the case of severe corona courses, the lungs and heart can be affected.

3-D models now show what happens in the heart when an infection occurs.

Munich - An interdisciplinary research group from the Universities of Göttingen and the Hannover Medical School (MHH) has researched that corona can not only attack the lungs, but also explicitly the heart.

The scientists have shown that changes in the heart muscle tissue can occur.

They noted these changes in the bodies of people who died from Covid, the universities said.

The current study (published in the specialist journal 

underpins the involvement of the heart in Covid-19 for the first time on a cellular level by visualizing and analyzing the affected tissue in the third dimension.

Scientists show how Corona attacks the heart

Vascular network (red) in healthy heart tissue (left) and in severe cases of Covid-19 (right).

The misdirected new formation of the network as a result of Covid-19 results in numerous branches, ramifications and even loops in the capillaries, which can be mathematically analyzed by counts.

© M. Reichardt, P. Møller Jensen, T. Salditt

Using synchrotron radiation (a special type of X-ray radiation), the researchers were able to image the tissue with high resolution and in three dimensions.

"In the examined severe disease courses of Covid-19, they observed strong changes at the level of the finest vessels, the so-called capillaries, in the heart muscle tissue," says a statement from the University of Göttingen.

In contrast to the healthy heart, people who died of Corona were seen to have a “chaotically rebuilt network full of splits, branches and loops due to the formation and splitting of the vessels”.

These are the first visual evidence of a special form of new blood vessel formation in the tissue, which also damages the lungs with Covid.

New branches: Models show changes in the heart after Corona

In order to make this new network clear, the vessels in the three-dimensional volume first had to be identified using machine learning methods.

To do this, image data first had to be marked by hand.

“In order to accelerate the image processing, we have therefore automatically broken down the tissue architecture into its local symmetry features and then compared them,” explains first author Marius Reichardt from the University of Göttingen.

"The parameters obtained from this then showed a completely different quality compared to healthy tissue and diseases such as severe influenza and common myocardial inflammation," said the head of the study, Prof. Dr.

Tim Salditt from the University of Göttingen and Prof. Dr.

Danny Jonigk from MHH.

Scientific knowledge could help with corona diagnostics

The special thing about this study: In contrast to the vascular architecture, the necessary data quality could already be achieved with a compact X-ray source in the laboratory of the University of Göttingen - this could in principle also be implemented in every clinic in order to support pathologists in routine diagnostics.

The researchers want to expand the approach of converting the characteristic tissue patterns into abstract mathematical plots in the future.

One could then possibly develop automated tools that can help with diagnostics.