Coronavirus may be able to directly infect heart cells, study suggests
- Researchers in California have established a possible explanation for why some patients develop cardiac complications
- Virus able to enter lab-grown heart cells, change their gene expressions and multiply
The study, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, was published in the online journal Cell Reports Medicine on June 18 and sheds light on why many Covid-19 patients suffer cardiac complications such as arrhythmia, heart failure and viral myocarditis, even without underlying heart problems.
A recent autopsy study showed DNA testing revealed the presence of RNA strains of Sars-Cov-2 in the heart. But the risks of performing an invasive procedure in a living patient to obtain heart muscle samples – a gold standard in reaching a conclusion – were too high, the scientists said.
Instead, the researchers, from Cedars-Sinai Smidt Heart Institute, a heart hospital in California, decided to test lab-cultured heart muscle cells using stem cell technology to establish where the cells could be directly infected by the novel coronavirus.
Their results showed the coronavirus was able to enter the cells in cultured lab dishes, change their gene expressions and multiply. The cells also stopped beating 72 hours after infection.
Researchers also found that treatment with an ACE2 antibody – the human enzyme which the virus uses to enter the body – was able to blunt viral replication on the cell-derived heart cells, suggesting the ACE2 receptor could be used by Sars-CoV-2 to enter human heart muscle cells.