COVID-19 infection increases the risk of serious heart disease after up to 1 year

Cardiovascular care that is indispensable for post-infection care.

A detailed analysis of federal health data COVID-19 (new coronavirus infection) There is an increased risk of developing cardiovascular complications within the first month to one year after infection. Such complications include destructive heart rhythm, heart inflammation, blood clots, stroke, coronary artery disease, heart attack, heart failure, and even death.

According to researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and the St. Louis Veteran Health System, such problems also occur among people who were previously healthy or who had a mild COVID-19 infection.

This study was conducted on February 7, 2022. Nature medicine..

Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Washington and senior author, said: “What we see is not good. COVID-19 can lead to serious cardiovascular complications and death. The heart regenerates or is easily repaired after a heart injury. There is no such thing as these are diseases that affect people for the rest of their lives. “

Since the beginning of the pandemic, more than 380 million people worldwide have been infected with the virus.

“As a result, COVID-19 infection has so far contributed to 15 million new cases of heart disease worldwide,” said Al-Aly, who treats patients within the VA St. Louis Healthcare System. I am. “This is very important. For those who have been infected, it is essential that heart health is an integral part of post-acute COVID care.”

Cardiovascular disease (a comprehensive term for various heart conditions, thrombosis, and stroke) is a leading cause of death in the United States and around the world. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that one in four Americans die of heart disease each year.

In addition, according to the CDC, heart disease has a high price tag, with about $ 363 billion in medical services, medicines and productivity losses each year in the United States.

“For those who were clearly at risk of heart disease before becoming infected SARS-CoV-2The findings suggest that COVID-19 may increase risk, “said Al, director of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and director of research and education services for the Veterans St. Louis Healthcare System. -Aly says.

“But most notably, people who were considered to have no heart problems and were at low risk also developed heart problems after COVID-19,” he added. “Our data show that young people and the elderly are at increased risk of heart damage. Men and women; blacks, whites, and all races. People with and without obesity. People with diabetes. People who have had heart disease before and who have not had heart disease before. People with mild COVID infection and people with more severe COVID who need to be hospitalized for it. “

Researchers analyzed anonymized medical records in a database maintained by the US Department of Veterans Affairs, the largest integrated health care delivery system in the United States. Researchers provided health information for 153,760 people who tested positive for COVID-19 at any time between March 1, 2020 and January 15, 2021 and survived the first 30 days of the disease. You have created a managed dataset that contains. Few people were vaccinated before developing COVID-19 because the vaccine was not yet widely available at the time of enrollment.

Statistical modeling was used to compare the cardiovascular outcomes of the COVID-19 dataset with the other two groups that were not infected with the virus. A control group of more than 5.6 million patients who did not have COVID-19 in the same time frame. And a control group of more than 5.8 million patients who were patients from March 2018 to January 2019, long before the virus spread and the pandemic became established.

This study does not include data on delta and omicron variants of the virus, which began to spread rapidly in late 2021.

Most of the COVID-19 patients in this study were older Caucasian men. However, the researchers also analyzed data that included females and adults of all ages and races.

Researchers have analyzed heart health over the course of a year. Heart disease, including heart failure and death, occurred 4% more than people who were not infected with COVID-19.

“Some people may think that 4% is a small number, but not because of the size of the pandemic,” Al-Aly said. “This is equivalent to about 3 million people in the United States suffering from COVID-19 cardiovascular complications.”

People infected with COVID-19 are 72% more likely to have coronary artery disease, 63% more likely to have a heart attack, and 52% more likely to experience a stroke than a non-infected control group. %it was high.

Overall, those infected with the virus were 55% more likely to suffer from major cardiovascular events such as heart attack, stroke, and death than those without COVID-19.

“Our findings highlight the serious long-term cardiovascular effects of COVID-19 infection and emphasize the importance of vaccination with COVID-19 as a way to prevent heart damage. This also emphasizes the importance of increasing access to vaccines in countries with limited resources, “Al-Aly said.

“Governments and healthcare systems around the world need to be prepared to address the perhaps significant contribution of the COVID-19 pandemic to the increased burden of cardiovascular disease,” he said. “The chronic nature of these conditions can have long-term effects on patients and the healthcare system, with a wide range of effects on economic productivity and life expectancy. Long-COVID provides To meet the challenges, we need what we need very much, but so far we need a lacking, urgent and coordinated long-term global response strategy. “

See: “Long-Term Cardiovascular Outcomes of COVID-19” by Yan Xie, Evan Xu, Benjamin Bowe, Ziyad Al-Aly, February 7, 2022, Nature medicine..
DOI: 10.1038 / s41591-022-01689-3