A recent study from the University of Queensland has discovered how COVID-19 damages the heart, opening the door to future treatments.
In this study, scientists found COVID-19 damaged the DNA in cardiac tissue, which wasn’t detected in influenza samples.
The team says while COVID-19 and influenza are both severe respiratory viruses, they appeared to affect the heart very differently.
In comparison to the 2009 flu pandemic, COVID has led to more severe and long-term heart disease but what was causing that at a molecular level wasn’t known.
In the study, the researchers couldn’t detect viral particles in the cardiac tissues of COVID-19 patients, but what they found was tissue changes linked to 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.
Data associated with the impact of COVID on the heart has previously been limited to blood biomarkers and physiological measurements, as obtaining heart biopsy samples is invasive.
This study was able to get deeper insights using actual cardiac tissues collected during autopsies from seven COVID patients from Brazil, two people who died from influenza, and six control patients.
The team says the findings provided insights into how COVID-19 impacted the body compared to other respiratory viruses.
The study has highlighted that the two viruses appear to affect cardiac tissue very differently, which they want to get a better understanding of in larger cohort studies.
This study helps understand how COVID-19 affects the heart, and that is the first step in working out what treatments might be best to repair that heart.
The study was conducted by Dr. Arutha Kulasinghe et al.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about the cause of severe COVID symptoms, and Omega-3 fatty acids may help reduce severe COVID-19.
For more information about COVID, please see recent studies about antibodies that block all the COVID-19 variants, and results showing zinc could help reduce COVID-19 infection risk.
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