Cardiology fellow Anum Minhas explains a study finding that death from COVID-19 was linked to heart dysfunction; heart dysfunction was also associated with the inflammatory marker IL-6.
so most of you know and are well aware the whole world is going through the Cove in 19 Pandemic. And this has affected millions of people around the world as clinicians, researchers, public health advocates. It's our job to try to find out what the different effects are of covert and what we can best do in our subspecialty areas in regard to Cove in 19. So our goal here was to determine the extent of my cardio dysfunction, or the extent that the heart, in particular the left side of the heart, gets affected in the setting of covert 19. So we looked at patients that were hospitalized at Johns Hopkins hospitals that received an echocardiogram or an ultrasound of the heart done for clinical purposes, to see how many of them have an effect on the heart. In particular, we look at a novel parameter called Maya cardio work, so as opposed to a normal echocardiogram that really just gives you the function of the heart. Presented as an ejection fraction. This takes it a step further and add sensitivity for cardiac function and takes into account the patient's blood pressure at the time. So when we use this perimeter, my cardio work, and we looked at this in a group of over 80 patients. We find out that 79% of patients that were hospitalized with Cove in 19 that had apple cardiograms and we could do the analysis had dysfunction as measured by my cardio work. Now the standard measurement technique is called Ejection Fraction. And even when we look at patients that Onley have normal ejection fraction, we noticed that these patients still have abnormal Maya cardio work. So what that means is, patients have effects on heart function that are not being detected by just the standard techniques that are normally done. We then, or interested in finding out. So what can we learn from this information? Could my cardio work give us an idea of who is likely to die from Cove in 19? And we found out that compared to the other parameters that we get from an echocardiogram, my cardio work with superior and despite accounting for the patients age for their sex, be they male or female for pre existing conditions? My cardio work was still associated with death, at least in the hospital setting. Next, we really wanted to see if we could identify what might be contributing toe abnormal Maya cardio work. So there's been a lot of research recently showing that Cove in 19 is associated with heightens inflammation in the whole body in particular. And Marker called Interleukin six has been shown to be high in multiple studies of Koven 19 patients. We looked at interleukin six along with several other inflammatory markers, and found out that interleukin six was actually the one that best seemed toe be associated with abnormal, my cardio work or abnormal cardiac function for the Left Heart. Now the bigger question, of course going forward is. Do these findings continue to occur in patients after they leave the hospital? The first step now being that at least we are identifying that there is a problem, that there is an effect on cardiac function which is important, which is very important. A lot of the focus so far on Cove it had been on respiratory function, But, um, it's time for us to be looking beyond the lungs and beyond. Just a fever and see what other organs are being affected, in particular the heart and it looks like and almost 80% of patients in the hospital. Their heart function has some subtle abnormalities. Now, whether or not those continue beyond their hospital mission is ongoing work that our group is looking at and perhaps other people are too.
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