Researchers who studied the heart after death from COVID-19 noted that although cardiac damage was common, it was more from clotting than inflammation.
Specifically, autopsies on 40 people who died of COVID-19 showed that 14 had cardiac injury as indicated by myocardial necrosis (tissue death of the heart muscle); an acute myocardial infarction in three (7.5%) and smaller focal myocyte necrosis in 11 (27.5%).
Microthrombi were frequent, whereas none of those patients had myocarditis, except sarcoid involvement in one case, said Dr. Giulio Guagliumi, of Ospedale Papa Giovanni XXIII in Bergamo, Italy. Epicardial coronary artery thrombosis (a blood clot inside a blood vessel of the heart) was found in two of the myocardial necrosis patients (14.2%) and microthrombi (a microscopic clump of fibrin, platelets, and red blood cells) in nine (64.3%).
"New targeted therapeutic approaches are needed for the prevention and treatment of cardiac injury of the patients with COVID-19 disease," Guagliumi said.