1.媒體來源:
USA Today
2.記者署名:
Adrianna Rodriguez
3.完整新聞標題:
Heart damage found in coronavirus patients months after recovering from
COVID-19, study says
4.完整新聞內文:
New evidence suggests the coronavirus has lasting impacts on the heart,
raising alarm for cardiologists who have been concerned about potential
long-term heart injury from COVID-19.
Two German studies, published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal JAMA
Cardiology, found heart abnormalities in COVID-19 patients months after they
had already recovered from the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2.
The first study included 100 patients from the University of Hospital
Frankfurt COVID-19 Registry who were relatively healthy adults in their 40s
and 50s. About one-third of the patients required hospitalization, while the
rest recovered from home.
Researchers looked at cardiac magnetic resonance imaging taken nearly two
and a half months after they were diagnosed and compared them with images
from people who never had COVID-19. The study found heart abnormalities in 78
patients, with 60 of those patients showing signs of inflammation in the
heart muscle from the virus.
“When this came to our attention, we were struck,” said Dr. Clyde Yancy,
chief cardiologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and an editor at JAMA
Cardiology.
The findings would have been virtually impossible to pinpoint without this
study, as the majority of patients didn't exhibit any symptoms and these
specific abnormalities detected by the MRI wouldn't have been seen on an
echocardiogram, which is more commonly used in the standard clinical setting.
Experts say the prevalence of inflammation is an important connection to
COVID-19 as the disease has a clinical reputation for a high inflammatory
response. Dr. Thomas Maddox, chair of the American College of Cardiology’s
Science and Quality Committee, said heart inflammation could lead to
weakening of the heart muscle and, in rare cases, abnormal heart beats.
Yancy said inflammation is the first prerequisite for heart failure and, over
a longer period of time, could “leave important residual damage” that could
“set up the scenario” for other forms of heart disease.
A grim milestone: US hits 150,000 deaths from COVID-19 as states struggle to
halt resurgence
“We’re not saying that COVID-19 causes heart failure… but it presents
early evidence that there’s potentially injury to the heart,” Yancy said.
Maddox says the study contributes to growing evidence to suggest that heart
injury in COVID-19 patients may be a “bystander effect” of the overall
inflammatory reaction to the virus instead of direct viral invasion of the
heart.
Although the inflammation is indicative of COVID-19, Dr. Paul Cremer, a
cardiovascular imager at the Cleveland Clinic, says having imaging before
patients were sick could have strengthened the study’s argument that the
disease could have caused these heart abnormalities.
“Seeing inflammation in the heart muscle… it’s hard to think of other
causes because of COVID-19, but I think it needs to be validated in other
studies,” he said.
The findings come after a Cleveland Clinic study published July 9 in the
medical journal JAMA Network Open spotlighted a number of cases of “broken
heart syndrome,” or stress cardiomyopathy, doubled during the COVID-19
pandemic.
Stress cardiomyopathy occurs in response to physical or emotional distress
and causes dysfunction or failure in the heart muscle. Experts say more
research is needed to understand the implications of these studies and their
long-term effect on the heart.
“We need to understand longer term clinical symptoms and outcome that might
occur in patients who’ve had it and recovered,” Maddox said. “That will
just take some time to look at as more and more people get the infection and
recover.”
簡單翻譯
最近在德國有研究針對對象是40-50歲相對健康的族群，
結果表示，即使大多數患者在康復後沒有表現出任何症狀，
但是透過心臟磁共振成像顯示，這群表面已經恢復的病人中有八成的人顯示心臟異常，
並有六成的人出現持續性的心肌炎症。
心肌發炎是心力衰竭的首要前提，並且在未來可能“留下重要的殘餘損害”，
從而可能“引發其他形式的心髒病”。
而研究中表示，沒有任何先前的案例可以解釋這種損害，
研究對象中只有三分之一的人因COVID-19住院治療。
其餘的人在整個生病過程中都能待在家裡。
目前尚不清楚這種損害將持續多長時間。
5.完整新聞連結 (或短網址):
https://tinyurl.com/y5qgnaxx
6.備註:
即使台灣目前的防疫做得很好，但是對於這個病毒還有太多未知的問題，
還是要隨時保持警戒。
感到瑟瑟發抖...