In a study from the University of Michigan, scientists found heart risk factors, not heart disease itself, may increase the risk of COVID-19 death.
They found patients’ risk of dying from COVID-19 may stem not directly from heart disease, but from the factors that contribute to it.
COVID-19 is known to cause organ damage through uncontrolled inflammation.
Inflammation also is common in people with heart disease and stroke, and it’s associated with smoking and other cardiovascular disease risk factors such as high blood pressure and diabetes.
People with heart disease have been, and continue to be, at higher risk of developing severe COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the study, researchers looked at the records of 5,133 critically ill COVID-19 patients who were part of a collaborative study called STOP-COVID.
The patients came from 68 hospitals across the U.S. and were admitted to ICUs between March 1 and July 1, 2020.
Of those people, 1,174 had pre-existing heart disease, defined in the study as including coronary artery disease (plaque in the heart’s arteries), heart failure (where the heart fails to pump effectively) or atrial fibrillation (a type of irregular heartbeat).
The team found having pre-existing cardiovascular disease initially appeared to be a risk factor for dying within 28 days of hospital admission for COVID.
But when researchers separated out things associated with cardiovascular disease, such as age, high blood pressure and diabetes, the link between heart disease itself and death from COVID appeared to be not strong.
The researchers found the most important risk factors for death to be, in order, age, body mass index (a measure of obesity), race and ethnicity, and history of smoking.
The results suggest the increased risk of death among heart disease patients studied is less that they have plaque-lined arteries and more that they have risk factors contributing to COVID-19’s hyperinflammation.
In the second part of their analysis, the researchers looked at a biomarker for heart damage called troponin. Troponin is commonly used as a test for whether someone has had a heart attack.
The team found the higher the troponin level, the more likely a patient would die.
Together, that suggests the cardiac injury is probably related to the stress of the acute COVID-19 illness rather than a sign of new complications of cardiovascular disease.
If you care about COVID, please read studies about why smokers have a lower risk of COVID-19, and this drug can block multiple COVID-19 variants.
For more information about COVID, please see recent studies about the cause of deadly organ damage in COVID-19, and results showing these common anti-inflammatory drugs could help cut COVID-19 deaths.
The study was conducted by Dr. Salim Hayek et al and published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
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