A pair of new studies on the health impacts of COVID-19 show the virus may cause unforeseen and lasting damage to the human heart.
The German studies - released on Monday (local time) in medical journal JAMA Cardiology - suggested coronavirus infection could be a precursor to heart failure - a decline in the heart's ability to pump blood throughout the body.
The first, a study of 100 patients recently recovered from COVID-19, shows the majority either had cardiac involvement (78 percent) or inflammation (60 percent), "independent of preexisting conditions, severity and overall course of the acute illness".
Three of every four cases tested also had evidence of cardiac injuries similar to those seen in the aftermath of a heart attack.
The other study, which analysed the bodies of 39 COVID-19 patients who'd died during the pandemic, found high levels of coronavirus in the hearts of 24 of them.
"We don't know the long-term consequences of the changes in gene expression yet," Dirk Westermann, a cardiologist at the University Heart and Vascular Centre in Hamburg, told Stat.
"I know from other diseases that it's obviously not good to have that increased level of inflammation."
In the 'key points' section of each study, the authors concluded that the findings indicate the need for investigations into the long-term consequences for the health of those who've contracted COVID-19.
In an opinion piece for JAMA, cardiologists Clyde Yancy and Gregg Fonarow urged scientists to look further into the link between coronavirus and poor heart health outcomes.
"We wish not to generate additional anxiety but rather to incite other investigators to carefully examine existing and prospectively collect new data in other populations to confirm or refute these findings," they wrote.
"If this high rate of risk is confirmed... then the crisis of COVID-19 will not abate but will instead shift to a new de novo incidence of heart failure and other chronic cardiovascular complications."
"Given the pressing burden of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis… the concerns we are raising are not theoretical but instead practical and require our due diligence to study and prepare for what may be another dimension of the COVID-19 crisis."
The lasting impacts of coronavirus have not been studied in detail, as the disease only rose to prominence a few months ago.
The focus of research to date has been on finding effective treatments for the disease, which the World Health Organization reports has now infected more than 16 million people globally.
