COVID Attacks DNA in Heart, Unlike Flu, Study Says

Sept. 30, 2022 — COVID-19 causes DNA harm to the center, affecting the physique in a very totally different method than the flu does, in response to a latest examine revealed in Immunology 

The examine regarded on the hearts of sufferers who died from COVID-19, the flu, and different causes. The findings may present clues about why coronavirus has led to problems reminiscent of ongoing coronary heart points.

“We found a lot of DNA damage that was unique to the COVID-19 patients, which wasn’t present in the flu patients,” Arutha Kulasinghe, one of many lead examine authors and a analysis fellow on the University of Queensland in Australia, instructed the Brisbane Times.

“So in this study, COVID-19 and flu look very different in the way they affect the heart,” he mentioned.

Kulasinghe and colleagues analyzed the hearts of seven COVID-19 sufferers, two flu sufferers, and 6 sufferers who died from different causes. They used transcriptomic profiling, which seems on the DNA panorama of an organ, to analyze coronary heart tissue from the sufferers.

Due to earlier research about coronary heart issues related to COVID-19, he and colleagues anticipated to search out excessive irritation within the coronary heart. Instead, they discovered that irritation alerts had been suppressed within the coronary heart, and markers for DNA harm and restore have been a lot increased. They’re nonetheless not sure of the underlying trigger.

“The indications here are that there’s DNA damage here, it’s not inflammation,” Kulasinghe mentioned. “There’s something else going on that we need to figure out.”

The harm was much like the way in which persistent ailments reminiscent of diabetes and most cancers seem within the coronary heart, he mentioned, with coronary heart tissue displaying DNA harm alerts. 

Kulasinghe mentioned he hopes different research can construct on the findings to develop danger fashions to know which sufferers could face a better danger of great COVID-19 problems. In flip, this might assist medical doctors present early remedy. For occasion, all seven COVID-19 sufferers had different persistent ailments, reminiscent of diabetes, hypertension, and coronary heart illness. 

“Ideally in the future, if you have cardiovascular disease, if you’re obese or have other complications, and you’ve got a signature in your blood that indicates you are at risk of severe disease, then we can risk-stratify patients when they are diagnosed,” he mentioned. 

The analysis is a preliminary step, Kulasinghe mentioned, because of the small pattern measurement. This kind of examine is usually troublesome to conduct as a result of researchers have to attend for the supply of organs, in addition to request permission from households for autopsy autopsies and biopsies, to have the ability to have a look at the results on useless tissues.

“Our challenge now is to draw a clinical finding from this, which we can’t at this stage,” he added. “But it’s a really fundamental biological difference we’re observing [between COVID-19 and flu], which we need to validate with larger studies.”