In a new study from Washington University in St. Louis, researchers found that people who have had COVID-19 are at increased risk of developing cardiovascular complications within the first month to a year after infection.
Such complications include disruptive heart rhythms, inflammation of the heart, blood clots, stroke, coronary artery disease, heart attack, heart failure or even death.
Such problems occur even among previously healthy individuals and those who have had mild COVID-19 infections.
More than 380 million people globally have been infected with the virus since the pandemic started.
Consequently, COVID-19 infections have, thus far, contributed to 15 million new cases of heart disease worldwide.
In the study, the team found for people who were clearly at risk for a heart condition before becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2, the findings suggest that COVID-19 may amplify the risk.
But most remarkably, people who have never had any heart problems and were considered low risk are also developing heart problems after COVID-19.
The team showed an increased risk of heart damage for young people and old people; males and females; Blacks, whites and all races; people with obesity and people without; people with diabetes and those without; people with prior heart disease and no prior heart disease; people with mild COVID infections and those with more severe COVID who needed to be hospitalized for it.
The researchers created a controlled dataset that included health information of 153,760 people who had tested positive for COVID-19 sometime from March 1, 2020, through Jan. 15, 2021, and who had survived the first 30 days of the disease.
Compared with those in the control groups without any infections, people who contracted COVID-19 were 72% more likely to suffer from coronary artery disease, 63% more likely to have a heart attack and 52% more likely to experience a stroke.
Overall, those infected with the virus were 55% more likely than those without COVID-19 to suffer a major adverse cardiovascular event, which includes heart attack, stroke and death.
These findings highlight the serious long-term cardiovascular consequences of having a COVID-19 infection and emphasize the importance of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 as a way to prevent heart damage.
If you care about heart health, please read studies about common food that could strongly increase heart disease risk, and supplements that could prevent heart disease, stroke effectively.
For more information about Covid, please see recent studies about antibodies that could neutralize Omicron, and results showing whether hydroxychloroquine could effectively fight omicron.
The study is published in Nature Medicine and was conducted by Ziyad Al-Aly et al.
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