Getting sick from COVID-19 can create vascular damage to the heart

COVID-19 can cause vascular damage to the heart, as a scientific team has been able to observe thanks to innovative X-ray images in patients who died from this disease.

The team of researchers from the University of Göttingen and the Hannover Faculty of Medicine (Germany) detected “significant changes” in the heart muscle due to COVID-19.

The study corroborates the existence of damage to the heart by obtaining images and analyzing the affected tissue in three dimensions, according to eLife.

The scientists obtained images of the tissue architecture at high resolution using synchrotron radiation – an especially bright X-ray radiation – and studied them in three dimensions.

In examining the effects of COVID-19 severe in the heart, they observed “clear changes” in the capillaries (the tiny blood vessels) of muscle tissue, explains the University of Göttingen in a statement.

Compared with a healthy heart, images of severely diseased tissues revealed a network filled with divisions, branches, and loops that had been chaotically remodeled by the formation and division of new vessels.

These changes are the first direct visual evidence of one of the main drivers of lung damage to the COVID-19: a special kind of “Intussusceptive angiogenesis” (formation of new vessels) in the tissue.

The directors of the study Tim Salditt Y Danny Jonigk highlighted that the parameters obtained “They showed a completely different quality compared to healthy tissue or even diseases such as severe influenza or common myocarditis”.