COVID-19 can disrupt the heart's electric system, according to a report undergoing peer review at a Nature Research journal. The research team made this discovery after an autopsy of a COVID-19 patient who died of sudden cardiac arrest found the virus had infected her heart in an unusual patchy pattern, "with small islands of infected cells here and there," Dr. Jay Schneider of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota told Reuters. Upon further study in the laboratory, his team realized the spike protein on the surface of the new coronavirus can create holes between neighboring cells, causing them to fuse together. "Not surprisingly," fusing beating heart cells causes problems, Schneider said. Normally, as electrical signals travel through the heart, each conducting cell activates the one next to it in a domino effect to ensure smooth contractions. But in the researchers' experiments, instead of orderly electrical signal transmission and a steady heart rhythm, the signals flowed like "a tsunami tidal wave" through the fused cells. The researchers say their study may help explain the cardiac injuries often seen in COVID-19 patients without large amounts of virus in the heart or other expected findings. —Reuters Staff Source
