Are these numbers higher or lower than what we’d expect to see in terms of myocarditis and myopericarditis cases resulting from infection with COVID-19?
I’m genuinely curious as I haven’t been able to find a good comparison on my own but I have read that damage to heart tissue is a potential long-term complication resulting from natural infection.
Great question, I'm only aware of one paper that somewhat answers that question in a limited sub-population (college athletes). To truly answer that question we would need perform cardiac magnetic resonance imaging on a large population-representative sample. If anyone is aware of such a study please do share.
> Representing 13 universities, cardiovascular testing was performed in 1597 athletes (964 men [60.4%]). Thirty-seven (including 27 men) were diagnosed with COVID-19 myocarditis (overall 2.3%; range per program, 0%-7.6%); 9 had clinical myocarditis and 28 had subclinical myocarditis. If cardiac testing was based on cardiac symptoms alone, only 5 athletes would have been detected (detected prevalence, 0.31%). Cardiac magnetic resonance imaging for all athletes yielded a 7.4-fold increase in detection of myocarditis (clinical and subclinical). Follow-up CMR imaging performed in 27 (73.0%) demonstrated resolution of T2 elevation in all (100%) and late gadolinium enhancement in 11 (40.7%).
I’m genuinely curious as I haven’t been able to find a good comparison on my own but I have read that damage to heart tissue is a potential long-term complication resulting from natural infection.