A series of autopsies conducted by LSU Health New Orleans pathologists shows the damage to the hearts of COVID-19 patients is not the expected typical inflammation of the heart muscle associated with myocarditis, but rather a unique pattern of cell death in scattered individual heart muscle cells. They report the findings of a detailed study of hearts from 22 deaths confirmed due to COVID-19 in a Research Letter published in Circulation, available here.

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"We identified key gross and microscopic changes that challenge the notion that typical myocarditis is present in severe SARS-CoV-2 infection," says Richard Vander Heide, M.D., Ph.D., Professor and Director of Pathology Research at LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine. "While the mechanism of cardiac injury in COVID-19 is unknown, we propose several theories that bear further investigation that will lead to greater understanding and potential treatment interventions."

The team of LSU Health pathologists led by Dr. Vander Heide, an experienced cardiovascular pathologist, also found that unlike the first SARS coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 was not present in heart muscle cells. Nor were there occluding blood clots in the coronary arteries.