Hunter Boyce | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (TNS)
COVID-19 can harm your heart, even without the virus directly infecting cardiac tissue. This was found in a recent study supported by the National Institutes of Health. supported by the National Institutes of Health.
The study, published in the journal Circulation, examined the damaged hearts of patients with severe lung infections linked to the virus. It concluded that COVID-19 patients with severe lung infections were at risk of heart damage. The findings may have implications for organs other than the heart and other viruses besides COVID-19.
COVID-19 increases the risk of heart attack and stroke for individuals. More than half of COVID-19 patients experience some inflammation or damage to the heart, according to imaging research. imaging research.
The question of whether the virus harms the heart by directly infecting heart tissue or through systemic inflammation is crucial and finding the answer could save lives.
This critical question was addressed by Michelle Olive, Ph.D., who told the NIH, “Finding the answer opens up a whole new understanding of the link between this serious lung injury and the kind of inflammation that can lead to cardiovascular complications.” Olive is associate director of the Basic and Early Translational Research Program at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
To answer the question, researchers studied mice exposed to biological signals that simulated lung inflammation.
“This study demonstrates that after a COVID infection, the immune system can cause damage to other organs by triggering significant inflammation throughout the body— this is in addition to the damage caused by the virus to the lung tissue,” said Matthias Nahrendorf, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School and senior author on the study. “These findings can also be applied more widely, as our results suggest that any severe infection can have widespread effects on the body.”
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