COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease

Suri P, Arora V

Pdf Page Numbers :- 69-73

Pawan Suri¹ and Vanita Arora^2,*

¹SGL Superspeciality Hospital, Jalandhar, Punjab-144022, India

²Cardiac Electrophysiology Laboratory & Arrhythmia Services, Max Healthcare Superspeciality Hospital, Saket, New Delhi-110017, India

*Corresponding author: Dr. Vanita Arora, MD; DNB (Cardiology); FRCP (Edin)., Director & Head, Cardiac Electrophysiology lab & Arrhythmia Services, Max Healthcare Superspeciality Hospital, Saket, New Delhi-110017, India. Email: aroraheartrhythmdoc@gmail.com

Received 15 September 2020; Revised 30 October 2020; Accepted 14 November 2020; Published 24 November 2020

Citation: Suri P, Arora V. COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease. J Med Sci Res. 2020; 8(S1):69-73. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17727/JMSR.2020/8S1-8

Copyright: © 2020 Suri P et al. Published by KIMS Foundation and Research Center. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a spectrum of disease spanning from a barely symptomatic infection to critical illness, is caused by the new coronavirus - severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Although lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome have been at a centre stage as the most dreadful complications of COVID-19, the heart damage has recently emerged as yet another grim outcome in the virus’s repertoire of possible complications. The cardiac involvement occurs as a direct invasion of cardiomyocytes by the virus via the angiotensin‐converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors and also indirectly by the inflammatory reaction due to cytokine storm. COVID-19 increases the severity of an already pre-existing heart disease and also unmasks the cardiac symptoms in a previously undiagnosed heart disease as well. Apart from this the drugs that are repurposed and are supposed to have a preventive or a therapeutic potential are also supposedly causing cardiac side effects. In the absence of substantial database all these seem to be a hypothetical correlation and one needs to rely on clinical skills and acumen.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; cardiovascular disease; acute respiratory distress syndrome