Imaging of Long Term Tissue Damage from COVID-19 and Cardiometabolic Disease

Over 80% of Canadians are recovered from COVID-19 infection with evidence of long-term symptoms in more than 1 in 10 people. Even more Canadians suffer from cardiometabolic disorders (e.g. hypertension, high blood sugar, obesity), leading to diabetes, liver and heart disease. COVID-19 and cardiometabolic disease have common underlying mechanisms like inflammation, which can lead to tissue damage. We know that pre-existing cardiometabolic disease (if you are obese or have diabetes) worsens your response to COVID-19 infection (e.g. more severe symptoms, hospitalizations and death). COVID-19 can also lead to new or worsening cardiometabolic disease. In other words, these two pandemics make each other worse. We need more information about the interaction between COVID-19 infection and metabolic disease to understand and avoid the long-term health consequences we are now seeing every day. We will use magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies in COVID-19 patients to directly measure tissue damage early post-infection (a few months) and longer-term (several years) in multiple organs (heart, muscle, liver). We will thus characterize the extent of tissue damage in multiple organs. We will determine if these changes are long lasting (permanent). We will determine if the tissue damage is also related to cardiometabolic disease (e.g. amount of "bad" fat, blood glucose, hypertension, ...) and other related diseases such as diabetes. Our preliminary data in 190 COVID-19 patients shows that damage is common in multiple organs early after infection, which supports the need for our proposed longer-term studies. We expect to show that cardiometabolic disease (e.g. fat burden, elevated blood glucose, hypertension, ...) together with COVID-19 infection give rise to tissue damage and worsening cardiometabolic disease. This information will help guide the development of therapies to minimize tissue damage and the long-term health consequences.