Hot search! The new crown virus may have a direct impact on the DNA of the heart! It's not just about triggering inflammation, DNA damage is linked to these diseases...

Guide

This provides more evidence that the coronavirus is not "similar to the flu virus.
"

On the evening of October 5, when the National Day holiday is coming to an end, #New Coronavirus or Direct Impact on Heart DNA # was on the first
hot search.

The ability of the new crown virus to trigger a higher risk of long-term cardiovascular disease has been revealed
by many "long coronavirus" investigations.

However, a recent paper published by Australian researchers further explains how it affects the heart and how it differs from
the impact of the flu virus on the heart.
In the words of the researchers, the study clearly shows that the new crown is not "similar to the flu virus.
"

The study, led by the University of Queensland, has been published in the monthly journal Immunology
.
One of the study's authors, Dr Koulasingha, from the University of Queensland, said: "COVID-19 has led to more severe and long-term cardiovascular disease than the 2009 influenza pandemic, but at the molecular level, what factors contributed to this phenomenon is unclear
.
”

According to reports, in order to explore why people infected with the new crown epidemic have more serious and long-term cardiovascular disease compared with the 2009 influenza epidemic, the researchers launched a small-scale experiment: using heart tissue samples collected from the remains of 7 new crown patients (unvaccinated), 2 influenza patients and 6 control patients who died of other diseases for analysis
.

The results showed that the researchers found strong inflammation on heart samples from flu patients, while tissue changes
related to DNA damage and repair were found in heart samples of COVID-19 patients.

Koulasingha said that while the new coronavirus was not detected from heart tissue in the study, unique tissue changes related to DNA damage and repair have been found, and DNA damage and repair mechanisms cause genome instability and are linked
to chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer, atherosclerosis and neurodegenerative diseases.

John Fraser, a professor at the University of Queensland, said that the heart tissue of the flu dead was in a state of "excessive inflammation", but the new crown virus was attacking the DNA of patients, and it was not a chain reaction
caused by inflammation.
The researchers said the coronavirus is likely to have a direct impact
on the heart's DNA.

Kulasingha said that because medical institutions usually do not perform autopsies on the heart, research on the mechanism of the new crown virus's impact on the heart is still limited
.
Although research on clinical therapies is still ongoing, the impact of the new crown virus on other organs such as the heart has raised concerns about
the new crown for a long time.

John Fraser, a professor at the University of Queensland, said the study showed that the new coronavirus and the flu virus had different effects on heart tissue, which provided more evidence that the new coronavirus was not "similar to the flu virus"
.

Jason Kovasić, executive director of the Zhang Renqian Heart Institute in Australia, commented that the evolution of the "long new crown" in society is a matter of great importance, and the demand for "long new crown" outpatient clinics in hospitals is very large, which poses a huge challenge
to this demand.

Nature sub-journal:

Even patients who have fully recovered from mild infection

These complications can also occur

In December 2020, cardiologist Stuart Katz suddenly developed a fever
a week before he booked his first shot of COVID-19 vaccine.
For the next two weeks, he coughed incessantly and his body ached with chills
.

Katz, who had been helping others fight the effects of the pandemic for months, has now experienced firsthand what COVID-19 is all about
.
On Christmas Day, Katz's acute symptoms finally eased
.
But many of the symptoms didn't go away right away, and some related to the organ he'd been studying: the heart
.

Climbing two flights of stairs would keep him out of breath and his heart would beat 120 times
a minute.
Over the next few months, his feelings gradually improved, and he has now returned to his previous walking and cycling activities
.
But seeing the various reports of the impact of the new crown on the cardiovascular system, he is still very worried about his future health
.
Katz said: "I asked myself, is it really healed? ”

This is a real case mentioned in the August 2 article "Risk of Heart Disease after Covid-19: What the Data Say" published in the international scientific journal Nature, which found that people infected with the new crown virus are still at high
risk of cardiovascular problems such as heart disease or stroke even after a few months of recovery.

In a research paper published in Nature Medicine in February, researchers found that in the year after patients contracted the new crown virus, they suffered from heart attacks, arrhythmias, strokes, transient ischemic attacks, heart failure, inflammatory heart disease, cardiac arrest, pulmonary embolism and deep vein thrombosis The risk of other 20 types of cardiovascular diseases has increased
significantly.
The researchers also say these complications occur even in patients who have fully recovered from mild infections
.

The study showed that patients with severe COVID-19 had a significant increase in their risk of cardiovascular disease over the next year, with at least 20-fold
increased risk for cardiovascular diseases such as swollen hearts and thrombosis in the lungs compared to their uninfected peers.

In addition, the risk of COVID-19 patients who have not been hospitalized has also increased
.
For example, the rate of heart attacks increased by 8% and the rate of inflammation of the heart increased by 247%.

Eric Topol, a cardiologist at the Scripps Research Institute, said the findings were "shocking.
.
.
It was definitely worse than I expected," "All of this is a very serious illness
.
" If anyone thinks COVID-19 is the same as the flu, then this should be one of the strongest data to show that this is not the case.

”

According to Ziyad Al-Aly, a professor of epidemiology at Washington University in St.
Louis, who led the study, there is growing evidence that the new crown virus may permanently alter the physical health
of some groups.

According to Nature, these changes fall within the category of acute COVID-19 sequelae, which also cover some of the long-term COVID-19 symptoms
.
Some other previous studies have shown that the new crown virus may increase the risk of long-term diseases, such as diabetes, persistent lung damage and even brain damage
.

Larisa Tereshchenko, cardiologist and biostatistician at the Cleveland Clinic, said COVID-19 could be the highest risk factor for cardiovascular disease in the post-pandemic era, even greater
than the well-documented factors such as smoking and obesity.

She cautions that the new study needs to be repeated and that it is retrospective, potentially introducing inaccuracies, such as incorrect diagnoses
from patient medical records.

Researchers also don't know how the virus caused this long-term damage
.
But they believe that cardiovascular disease risk and a range of symptoms collectively known as "long-term COVID-19 symptoms," including brain fog, fatigue, weakness and loss of smell, may have common causes
.

"This is clear evidence
of long-term damage to the heart and blood vessels.
" A similar situation can occur in the brain and other organs, leading to characteristic symptoms of 'long-term COVID-19 symptoms', including brain fog
.
Ziyad Al-Aly, senior author and clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St.
Louis, said
.

Using the U.
S.
Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA), the researchers analyzed data on nearly 154,000 people infected with the coronavirus between March 2020 and January 2021, who survived at least 30 days
after infection.
They also identified two control groups: 5.
6 million people who sought VA care during COVID-19 but were not diagnosed with COVID-19, and 5.
9 million people who
sought VA care in 2017.

One limitation of the study was that only veterans were analyzed, so the data may be biased toward older adults, white people, and men.
Of all 3 groups, about 90 percent were male and 71 to 76 percent were white, with an average age of early
60 years.

"COVID-19 is a 'fair' criminal
.
" Al-Aly said we found an increased
risk of cardiovascular disease in the elderly and the young, diabetics and non-diabetics, obese and non-obese, smokers and never-smokers.

How the virus causes long-term damage to the heart and blood vessels remains a controversial and research-hungry question
.
Al-Aly says one possible mechanism is inflammation
of endothelial cells inside the heart and blood vessels.
But the researchers also listed a range of potential mechanisms, including lasting damage caused by the direct invasion of the virus into the heart muscle, elevated levels of pro-inflammatory chemical messenger cytokines leading to heart scarring, and the persistence of the virus in areas where the immune system cannot effectively handle it
.

Some small studies echo these results, but others do not have such a high
complication rate.
With hundreds of millions or even billions of people infected with COVID-19 worldwide, clinicians are wondering if there will be a residual wave
of cardiovascular disease after the earthquake.
At the same time, researchers are trying to understand who is most likely to develop such heart-related diseases, how long the risk lasts, and what causes these symptoms
.

It's a big gap in public health, Katz said, "and it's not clear whether this changes the lifetime risk of a heart attack or stroke or other cardiac event — we really don't know
.
" ”

How will the coronavirus damage the heart?

The impact of COVID-19 on the heart may be related
to the key proteins that the coronavirus uses to enter cells.
The new crown virus can bind to the ACE2 protein, which appears on the surface
of dozens of human cells.
Al-Aly said this could allow the coronavirus to enter almost all human cells
.

Topol said that when the new crown virus enters the endothelial cells on the surface of blood vessels, this could be the beginning
of many cardiovascular diseases.
Blood clots naturally form and repair the damage
caused by the body when it clears the infection.
These blood clots can block blood vessels, causing leg pain at the slightest and heart attack at the worst
.

A study of more than 500,000 COVID-19 cases found that these patients had a 167 percent
higher risk of developing blood clots within two weeks of infection than flu patients.
Robert Harrington, a cardiologist at Stanford University, said that even after the initial infection is over, plaque builds up where the immune response damages the inner surface of a blood vessel, causing the blood vessel to shrink
.
Even a few months after the initial wound has healed, it can still cause problems
such as heart attacks and strokes.

The new crown virus also leaves traces
in the immune system.
When Yale immunologist Akiko Iwasaki and her colleagues were characterizing antibodies to the acute phase of COVID-19 hospitalized patients, they found a large number of antibodies
against human tissue.

Iwasaki suspects that when the coronavirus stimulates the body's immune system, it may inadvertently activate immune cells that attack the body — cells that normally remain at rest when the immune system is not overactivated
.
These immune cells can damage many organs
, including the heart.

Damage to blood vessels can exacerbate attacks
on the immune system.
Iwasaki says it can be understood that this damage accumulates
over time.
When the front lines of the cardiovascular system are attacked to a certain extent, the body is at serious risk, such as stroke or heart attack
.

Previously, a study published in July 2020 in Cell Reports Medicine showed that the new crown virus can infect heart cells in laboratory dishes, suggesting that the heart cells of new coronavirus patients may be directly infected
by this virus.

Source: Cell Reports Medicine, 2020, doi: 10.
1016/j.
xcrm.
2020.
100052

The researchers also found that treatment with ACE2 antibodies was able to inhibit the replication of the virus on stem cell-derived heart cells, suggesting that ACE2 receptors may be used by the new coronavirus to enter human cardiomyocytes
.

Sharma said that by blocking the ACE2 protein with antibodies, the virus does not bind easily to the ACE2 protein and thus cannot easily enter the cell
.
This not only helps us understand the mechanism of action of this virus, but also suggests potential treatments
for SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Resources:

1.
Arun Sharma et al.
Human iPSC-Derived Cardiomyocytes , are Susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 Infection.
Cell Reports Medicine, 2020, doi:10.
1016/j.
xcrm.
2020.
100052.

2.
Study shows SARS-CoV-2 can infect heart cells in lab dish

https://medicalxpress.
com/news/2020-06-sars-cov-infect-heart-cells-lab.
html

The cover art comes from | Visual China

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