COVID-19 increases a patient’s risk of serious cardiovascular complications for a full year after infection, according to a new analysis published in Nature Medicine.[1] These long-COVID symptoms appear to even be true for patients who were never hospitalized at the time of infection.
“We wanted to build upon our past research on COVID’s long-term effects by taking a closer look at what’s happening in people’s hearts,” senior author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, an assistant professor of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a prepared statement. “What we’re seeing isn’t good. COVID-19 can lead to serious cardiovascular complications and death. The heart does not regenerate or easily mend after heart damage. These are diseases that will affect people for a lifetime.”
Al-Aly et al. tracked U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs data from more than 153,000 patients who survived at least the first 30 days of a confirmed coronavirus diagnosis. Patients were diagnosed with COVID-19 from March 2020 to January 2021, meaning very few of them were vaccinated at the time of the evaluation. More than 131,000 of patients were not hospitalized at the time of infection, suggesting their symptoms were mild.
The study’s authors compared this cohort with nearly 11.5 million control patients who had previously been enrolled in the Veterans Health Administration health system. These patients either showed no signs of COVID-19 infection or were evaluated before the pandemic.
Overall, the group found, COVID-19 patients were a whopping 55% more likely to experience a major adverse cardiovascular event within the first year of infection. They were also 72% more likely to develop coronary artery disease.
In addition, myocardial infarctions were 63% more likely among this cohort, and strokes were 52% more likely.
Al-Aly noted that these findings “emphasize the importance of getting vaccinated against COVID-19 as a way to prevent heart damage,” adding that increasing the availability of vaccines all over the world must be a priority. He also discussed just some of the many ways that this pandemic will continue to shape our world for years to come.
“Governments and health systems around the world should be prepared to deal with the likely significant contribution of the COVID-19 pandemic to a rise in the burden of cardiovascular diseases,” he said. “Because of the chronic nature of these conditions, they will likely have long-lasting consequences for patients and health systems, and also have broad implications on economic productivity and life expectancy. Addressing the challenges posed by long-COVID will require a much needed, but so far lacking, urgent and coordinated long-term global response strategy.”
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Michael has more than 16 years of experience as a professional writer and editor. He has written at length about cardiology, radiology, artificial intelligence and other key healthcare topics.