Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Cardiac symptoms are increasingly recognized as late complications of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 SARS-CoV-2 infection in previously well individuals with mild initial illness, but the underlying pathophysiology leading to long-term cardiac symptoms remains unclear.
In this study, we conducted serial cardiac assessments in a selected population of individuals with Coronavirus Disease COVID with no previous cardiac disease or notable comorbidities by measuring blood biomarkers of heart injury or dysfunction and by performing magnetic resonance imaging.
Symptomatic individuals had higher heart rates and higher imaging values or contrast agent accumulation, denoting inflammatory cardiac involvement, compared to asymptomatic individuals. Structural heart disease or high levels of biomarkers of cardiac injury or dysfunction were rare in symptomatic individuals.
Diffuse myocardial edema was more pronounced in participants who remained symptomatic at follow-up as compared to those who improved. Female gender and diffuse myocardial involvement on baseline imaging independently predicted the presence of cardiac symptoms at follow-up. Ongoing inflammatory cardiac involvement may, at least in part, explain the lingering cardiac symptoms in previously well individuals with mild initial COVID illness.
In individuals with long-term cardiac symptoms after an initially mild course of COVID illness, magnetic resonance imaging and measurement of cardiac injury biomarkers commonly detected ongoing cardiac inflammation but not structural heart disease.
