Physician-scientists specializing in heart failure wanted to know: if their heart transplant patients contract COVID-19, would they have a different experience than the general public or others who are also immunosuppressed?

A team of Michigan Medicine Frankel Cardiovascular Center researchers, led by Matthew Konerman, M.D., identified 13 patients who had a previous heart transplant and were admitted to one of two hospitals in southeast Michigan in March or April for COVID-19 symptoms. All were black males.

“Despite immunosuppression, the clinical presentation and laboratory markers of disease severity showed similarities to what has been observed in the general population,” says first author Scott Ketcham, M.D., an internal medicine resident physician. “However, almost half were critically ill and there was a higher rate of mortality than described among non-heart transplant recipients admitted with COVID-19.”

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