Patients hospitalized with COVID-19 have a small risk of heart failure
2021-04-26
(Press-News.org) Patients hospitalized with COVID-19 may be at risk of developing heart failure even if they do not have a previous history of heart disease or cardiovascular risk factors, a new Mount Sinai study shows.
Researchers say that while these instances are rare, doctors should be aware of this potential complication. The study, published in the April 26 online issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, may prompt more monitoring of heart failure symptoms among patients hospitalized with COVID-19.
"This is one of the largest studies to date to specifically capture instances of new heart failure diagnosis among patients hospitalized with COVID-19. While rare, the finding of new heart failure was more common among patients with preexisting cardiovascular risk factors or disease. But there were select individuals who developed new heart failure without risk factors or disease. We need to learn more about how SARS-CoV-2 [the virus that causes COVID-19] may directly affect the cardiovascular system and precipitate new heart failure- as to whether it is an indirect effect of critical illness or direct viral invasion," says lead researcher Anu Lala, MD, Director of Heart Failure Research at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. "Importantly, though symptoms of heart failure--namely shortness of breath--can mimic symptoms associated with COVID-19, being alerted to the findings of this study may prompt clinicians to monitor for signs of congestion more consistent with heart failure than COVID-19 alone."
The team of researchers looked at electronic medical records of 6,439 admitted and confirmed COVID-19-positive adult patients between February 27 and June 26, 2020, at Mount Sinai Health System hospitals. The median age was 64. Investigators found 37 patients (0.6 percent) with no prior history of heart failure who developed new cases of heart failure during their hospitalization for COVID-19. Of those new heart failure patients, eight of them (22 percent) had no previous cardiovascular disease or risk factors, while 14 had a history of heart disease and 15 had no heart disease but at least one risk factor for it. The eight patients with no prior history were younger with an average age of 43, mostly male, and had lower body mass index and fewer comorbidities such as respiratory or renal diseases. These eight patients also had more instances of cardiogenic shock, a life-threatening condition where the heart suddenly can't pump enough blood to the body. The patients who did have a history or risk factors for heart disease were, on average, 73 years old. All new heart failure patients were in the hospital for a similar amount of time, seven days on average, and survival rates were similar among both groups.
"Understanding specific mechanisms as to how COVID-19 may precipitate new heart failure should be the focus of future work," says first author Jesús Álvarez García, MD, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in advanced heart failure and transplantation at Icahn Mount Sinai.
"Moving forward, we also need to monitor patients after hospitalization for COVID-19 for signs and symptoms of heart failure, based on studies demonstrating fibrosis in the myocardium on MRI following infection. We still need to understand underlying mechanisms of injury related to infection with SARS-CoV-2. It has become obvious that the pandemic and its aftermath will be with us for some time, so devoting energy to better understanding its impact on the cardiovascular system, particularly as it relates to the precipitation of heart failure, is crucial," says Dr. Lala. "It will also be important to monitor if patients develop heart failure later down the line, and more broadly how the cardiovascular system is impacted after recovery from COVID-19."
This study is an extension of previous Mount Sinai research that found patients with a history of heart failure and hospitalized with COVID-19 were more likely to experience a longer hospitalization, nearly three times the risk of intubation and mechanical ventilation, and double the risk of death, compared to those without a history of heart failure.
INFORMATION:
About the Mount Sinai Health System
The Mount Sinai Health System is New York City's largest academic medical system, encompassing eight hospitals, a leading medical school, and a vast network of ambulatory practices throughout the greater New York region. Mount Sinai is a national and international source of unrivaled education, translational research and discovery, and collaborative clinical leadership ensuring that we deliver the highest quality care--from prevention to treatment of the most serious and complex human diseases. The Health System includes more than 7,200 physicians and features a robust and continually expanding network of multispecialty services, including more than 400 ambulatory practice locations throughout the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester, and Long Island. Mount Sinai Heart at The Mount Sinai Hospital is the nation's No. 6-ranked heart center, and The Mount Sinai Hospital is ranked No. 14 on U.S. News & World Report's "Honor Roll" of the Top 20 Best Hospitals in the country and the Icahn School of Medicine as one of the Top 20 Best Medical Schools in country. Mount Sinai Health System hospitals are consistently ranked regionally by specialty and our physicians in the top 1% of all physicians nationally by U.S. News & World Report.
For more information, visit https://www.mountsinai.org or find Mount Sinai on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-04-26
Skid marks left by cars are often analyzed for their impression patterns, but they often don't provide enough information to identify a specific vehicle. UCF Chemistry Associate Professor Matthieu Baudelet and his forensics team at the National Center for Forensic Science, which was established at UCF in 1997, may have just unlocked a new way to collect evidence from those skid marks.
The team recently published a study in the journal Applied Spectroscopy that details how they are classifying the chemical profile of tires to link vehicles back to potential crime ...
2021-04-26
A genome by itself is like a recipe without a chef - full of important information, but in need of interpretation. So, even though we have sequenced genomes of our nearest extinct relatives - the Neanderthals and the Denisovans - there remain many unknowns regarding how differences in our genomes actually lead to differences in physical traits.
"When we're looking at archaic genomes, we don't have all the layers and marks that we usually have in samples from present-day individuals that help us interpret regulation in the genome, like RNA or cell structure," said David Gokhman, a postdoctoral fellow in biology at Stanford University.
"We ...
2021-04-26
Gossip is often considered socially taboo and dismissed for its negative tone, but a Dartmouth study illustrates some of its merits. Gossip facilitates social connection and enables learning about the world indirectly through other people's experiences.
Gossip is not necessarily spreading rumors or saying bad things about other people but can include small talk in-person or online, such as having a private chat during a Zoom meeting. Prior research has found that approximately 14% of people's daily conversations are gossip, and primarily neutral in tone.
"Gossip is ...
2021-04-26
Powered flight in animals -that uses flapping wings to generate thrust- is a very energetically demanding mode of locomotion that requires many anatomical and physiological adaptations. In fact, the capability to develop it has only appeared four times in the evolutionary history of animals: on insects, pterosaurs, birds and bats.
A research paper published in 2020 in the scientific journal Current Biology concluded that, apart from birds -the only living descendants of dinosaurs-, powered flight would have originated independently in other three groups of dinosaurs. A conclusion that makes a great impact, as it increases the number of vertebrates that would have developed this costly mode of locomotion, ...
2021-04-26
A major hurdle to developing new and effective treatments for drug addiction is better understanding how exactly it manifests itself before, during and after chronic use. In a paper published online in the April 21, 2021 issue of the journal eNeuro, an international team of researchers led by scientists at University of California San Diego School of Medicine describe the creation of two unique collections of more than 20,000 biological samples collected from laboratory rats before, during and after chronic use of cocaine and oxycodone.
Developed by the Preclinical Addiction Research Consortium, located in the Department of Psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine and at Skaggs School of Pharmacy ...
2021-04-26
Corn is America's top agricultural crop, and also one of its most wasteful. About half the harvest--stalks, leaves, husks, and cobs-- remains as waste after the kernels have been stripped from the cobs. These leftovers, known as corn stover, have few commercial or industrial uses aside from burning. A new paper by engineers at UC Riverside describes an energy-efficient way to put corn stover back into the economy by transforming it into activated carbon for use in water treatment.
Activated carbon, also called activated charcoal, is charred biological material that has been treated to create millions of microscopic pores that increase how much the material can absorb. It has many industrial ...
2021-04-26
How often have you laid in bed scrolling through news stories, social media or responding to a text? After staring at the screen, have you ever found that it is harder to fall asleep?
It's widely believed that the emitted blue light from phones disrupts melatonin secretion and sleep cycles. To reduce this blue light emission and the strain on eyes, Apple introduced an iOS feature called Night Shift in 2016; a feature that adjusts the screen's colors to warmer hues after sunset. Android phones soon followed with a similar option, and now most smartphones have some sort of night mode function that claims ...
2021-04-26
The process designed to harvest on Earth the fusion energy that powers the sun and stars can sometimes be tricked. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics laboratory have derived and demonstrated a bit of slight-of-hand called "quasi-symmetry" that could accelerate the development of fusion energy as a safe, clean and virtually limitless source of power for generating electricity.
Fusion reactions combine light elements in the form of plasma -- the hot, charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei that makes up 99 percent of the visible universe ...
2021-04-26
LOS ANGELES -- Every year, more than 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke. Of these, approximately 80% lose arm function and as many as 50-60% of this population still experience problems six months later.
Traditionally, stroke patients try to regain motor function through physical rehabilitation, where patients re-learn pre-stroke skills, such as eating motions and grasping. However, most patients eventually plateau and stop improving over time.
Now, results of a clinical trial published in The Lancet gives patients new hope in their recovery.
Patients who received a novel treatment that combines vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) and rehabilitation showed ...
2021-04-26
A new study performed in human lung airway cells is one of the first to show a potential link between exposure to organophosphate pesticides and increased susceptibility to COVID-19 infection. The findings could have implications for veterans, many of whom were exposed to organophosphate pesticides during wartime.
Exposure to organophosphate pesticides is thought to be one of the possible causes of Gulf War Illness, a cluster of medically unexplained chronic symptoms that can include fatigue, headaches, joint pain, indigestion, insomnia, dizziness, respiratory disorders and memory problems. More than 25% of Gulf War veterans are estimated to experience this condition.
"We have identified a basic mechanism linked with inflammation that could increase susceptibility to COVID-19 infection ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Patients hospitalized with COVID-19 have a small risk of heart failure
