Skip to main content
. 2021 Oct 14;118(2):542–555. doi: 10.1093/cvr/cvab322

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Presence of SARS-CoV-2 in cardiac left ventricular tissue of fatal COVID-19 cases. (A) Presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA was examined in the cardiac tissue of 95 SARS-CoV-2-positive deceased. Virus load in 1 µg RNA was quantified by reverse transcription followed by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT–PCR). Despite the SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis, 46 out of 95 cases revealed no SARS-CoV-2 in the cardiac tissue. A copy number >1000 copies per µg RNA in the heart was deemed as clinically relevant and was detected in 41 cases, while 8 cases did not exceed the relevant number and were therefore excluded from further analyses. Cases without cardiac infection are depicted in white, whereas cases with cardiac infection are depicted in red. The median copy number (cn) per µg RNA was 7952 (IQR: 2507–32 005). Virus load for each case individually is plotted as heatmap in Supplementary material online, Figure S1A. MACE-RNA-seq identified 19 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) comparing cardiac tissue with (n = 10) and without (n = 10) cardiac infection. (B) In situ hybridization was used to visualize SARS-CoV-2 RNA on tissue specimens. Hybridized probes are specific either for the plus strand representing the viral genome or the minus strand representing the intermediate strand for replication. Representative images of Case 08 are displayed. Negative and positive controls for chromogenic in situ hybridization are shown in Supplementary material online, Figure S2.