{"id":3680,"date":"2022-02-14T16:29:42","date_gmt":"2022-02-14T16:29:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=3680"},"modified":"2022-02-14T16:29:42","modified_gmt":"2022-02-14T16:29:42","slug":"heart-disease-risk-soars-after-covid-even-with-a-mild-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cov19longhaulfoundation.org\/?p=3680","title":{"rendered":"Heart-disease risk soars after COVID \u2014 even with a mild case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Authors: Saima May Sidik<\/a> 10 February 2022 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Nature\"\/<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Massive study shows a long-term, substantial rise in risk of cardiovascular disease, including heart attack and stroke, after a SARS-CoV-2 infection. <\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even a mild case of COVID-19 can increase a person\u2019s risk of cardiovascular problems for at least a year after diagnosis, a new study1<\/a><\/sup> shows. Researchers found that rates of many conditions, such as heart failure and stroke, were substantially higher in people who had recovered from COVID-19 than in similar people who hadn\u2019t had the disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more, the risk was elevated even for those who were under 65 years of age and lacked risk factors, such as obesity<\/a> or diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter if you are young or old, it doesn\u2019t matter if you smoked, or you didn\u2019t,\u201d says study co-author Ziyad Al-Aly at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and the chief of research and development for the Veterans Affairs (VA) St. Louis Health Care System. \u201cThe risk was there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Al-Aly and his colleagues based their research on an extensive health-record database curated by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. The researchers compared more than 150,000 veterans who survived for at least 30 days after contracting COVID-19 with two groups of uninfected people: a group of more than five million people who used the VA medical system during the pandemic, and a similarly sized group that used the system in 2017, before SARS-CoV-2 was circulating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Troubled hearts<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

People who had recovered from COVID-19 showed stark increases in 20 cardiovascular problems over the year after infection. For example, they were 52% more likely to have had a stroke than the contemporary control group, meaning that, out of every 1,000 people studied, there were around 4 more people in the COVID-19 group than in the control group who experienced stroke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The risk of heart failure increased by 72%, or around 12 more people in the COVID-19 group per 1,000 studied. Hospitalization increased the likelihood of future cardiovascular complications, but even people who avoided hospitalization were at higher risk for many conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am actually surprised by these findings that cardiovascular complications of COVID can last so long,\u201d Hossein Ardehali, a cardiologist at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, wrote in an e-mail to Nature. <\/em>Because severe disease increased the risk of complications much more than mild disease, Ardehali wrote, \u201cit is important that those who are not vaccinated get their vaccine immediately\u201d.COVID\u2019s cardiac connection<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ardehali cautions that the study\u2019s observational nature comes with some limitations. For example, people in the contemporary control group weren\u2019t tested for COVID-19, so it\u2019s possible that some of them actually had mild infections. And because the authors considered only VA patients \u2014 a group that\u2019s predominantly white and male \u2014 their results might not translate to all populations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ardehali and Al-Aly agree that health-care providers around the world should be prepared to address an increase in cardiovascular conditions. But with high COVID-19 case counts still straining medical resources, Al-Aly worries that health authorities will delay preparing for the pandemic\u2019s aftermath for too long. \u201cWe collectively dropped the ball on COVID,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I feel we\u2019re about to drop the ball on long COVID.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

doi: https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/d41586-022-00403-0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

References<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
  1. Xie, Y., Xu, E., Bowe, B. & Al-Aly, Z. Nature Med<\/em>. https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41591-022-01689-3 (2022).PubMed<\/a> Article<\/a> Google Scholar<\/a> <\/li><\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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