Dangerous complications in COVID-19 are most often experienced by patients who have a history of chronic health problems.

According to Dr. David Gaze, Emeritus cardiology research fellow at Westminster University, about 10% of patients with COVID-19 suffer from heart disease, diabetes, and hypertension. However, diseases such as asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) occupy only 6% in the statistics of severe complications. Similar data were reported in reported for patients from China, Italy, the UK, and the USA.

As it turned out, COVID-19 provokes the occurrence of an inflammatory reaction called myocarditis in all severe cases. The virus can infect heart cells, causing severe inflammation of muscle tissue and weakening the heart's ability to pump blood and supply all organs with oxygen, said scientists from Mount Sinai Health System hospitals in New York City.

In a study published on the medRxiv preprint site, scientists reported that an increase in troponin, a regulatory protein that is involved in muscle contraction, was observed in approximately 40% of 2736 patients at the one of Mount Sinai Hospital.

Less than 20% of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 had troponin greater than 0.09 ng/ml, but even people with these rates had a significantly higher risk of mortality compared to those with troponin within the reference range. In addition, 2% of patients had a troponin level of 2 ng / ml, indicating severe complications.

In their findings, the researchers noted the need to use troponin levels as a risk marker that will help doctors reduce myocardial damage.

According to David Gaze, scientists do not yet understand how and why coronavirus affects the heart, but there can be several reasons for this. First of all, damage to the heart can be linked to the penetration of the virus into the cells. A spike protein on the surface of the virus is fixed on a cell surface receptor called ACE2. Patients with heart disease have more ACE2 receptors on the cell surface, which can lead to more viral particles entering the cell, causing significantly more inflammation than people with a healthy heart.

It is also possible that the body reacts to the pathogen to damage the heart.

Many viruses inflict a severe blow on the body that the heart cannot cope with, so more people die from heart diseases than from lung diseases, he said adding that in this sense, COVID-19 is like other respiratory pandemics.