1.媒体来源:
USA Today
2.记者署名:
Adrianna Rodriguez
3.完整新闻标题:
Heart damage found in coronavirus patients months after recovering from
COVID-19, study says
4.完整新闻内文:
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.”
简单翻译
最近在德国有研究针对对象是40-50岁相对健康的族群，
结果表示，即使大多数患者在康复后没有表现出任何症状，
但是透过心脏磁共振成像显示，这群表面已经恢复的病人中有八成的人显示心脏异常，
并有六成的人出现持续性的心肌炎症。
心肌发炎是心力衰竭的首要前提，并且在未来可能“留下重要的残余损害”，
从而可能“引发其他形式的心脏病”。
而研究中表示，没有任何先前的案例可以解释这种损害，
研究对象中只有三分之一的人因COVID-19住院治疗。
其余的人在整个生病过程中都能待在家里。
目前尚不清楚这种损害将持续多长时间。
5.完整新闻连结 (或短网址):
https://tinyurl.com/y5qgnaxx
6.备注:
即使台湾目前的防疫做得很好，但是对于这个病毒还有太多未知的问题，
还是要随时保持警戒。
感到瑟瑟发抖...