Recent research has discovered a connection between pneumonia and heart failure. The research, conducted in the School of Medicine at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, indicates that pneumonia bacterium leads to tiny lesions within the heart.

The researchers discovered that Streptococcus pneumoniae, the primary cause of community-acquired pneumonia, is physically damaging to the heart, leaving behind small lesions that were detected by researchers in tissue samples from mice, rhesus macaque and human autopsies.

The study’s senior author, Carlos Orihuela, Ph.D., associate professor of microbiology and immunology at the UT Health Science Center San Antonio, said in a statement, “If you have had severe pneumonia, this finding suggests your heart might be permanently scarred.”

It remains to be seen whether these small lesions in the heart lead to an increased risk of death among humans, or if the scarring that occurs after the pneumonia is permanent, therefore lowering cardiac function in individuals who have recovered from a severe episode of pneumonia. The team of researchers will study the long-term results in non-human primates at he Texas Biomedical Research Institute’s Southwest National Primate Research Center.

After entering the blood, Streptococcus pneumoniae invaded the heart and led to lesions in the myocardium, the middle layer of muscle in the heart wall, according to researchers.

Dr. Orihuela said, “Fortunately, we have a candidate vaccine that can protect against this.” The candidate vaccine assists in stopping the infection from moving into the heart along with the toxin that kills heart muscle cells known as cardiomyocytes. The study indicated that the vaccine protected immunized animals against the formation of cardiac lesions.

According to the National Institutes of Health, community acquired pneumonia (CAP) is a form of pneumonia found in individuals who have not recently been hospitalized or in a healthcare facility such as a nursing home or rehab facility.