The paper tweeted by @EricTopol and my friend @yaneerbaryam is very important, but hard to understand, so I'm taking a stab at it.
More than half of ppl infected by the #coronavirus might have heart damage for life.
More than half of ppl infected by the #coronavirus might have heart damage for life.
The key piece of the paper is at the end of the Discussion. Transcribing my highlights, slightly edited for clarity
"Aside from deaths, a majority of patients who recover from COVID-19 display significant levels of heart damage (∼80%)
"Aside from deaths, a majority of patients who recover from COVID-19 display significant levels of heart damage (∼80%)
Nearly HALF of all mildly ill COVID-19 patients have echo abnormalities.
Due to the heart’s innate lack of regenerative capacity, these results suggest that a majority of patients could suffer long-term consequences of COVID-19 on cardiac function, and that even the mildest cases could cause permanent heart damage.
Currently, the long-term effects of COVID-19 [heart issues] are unknown, but our findings raise concerns.
We do not know if some heart cell damage we've identified kills the cells forever], but based on what we see in the lab and in autopsies, it looks like permanent damage has occurred in a non-regenerative organ."
I was getting excited about many developing countries suffering very light deaths tolls (eg, Costa Rica, Kenya), but long-term heart damage for a sizable share of patients is really scary. If true, it would change the calculation on whether to stop the virus or not.
What studies have you found on this topic? Are there diverging opinions?
