First wave of COVID-19 increases risk of stroke and heart attack up to 3 years later
October 10, 2024
Press release
Thursday October 10, 2024
NIH-funded study focused on original strain of virus and people unvaccinated during pandemic.
SARS-CoV-2 (orange particles) is visible on the surface and budding from a heavily contaminated VERO cell (blue). The image was captured by the NIAID Integrated Research Facility at Fort Detrick.NIAID
COVID-19 infection increased the risk of stroke, heart attack, and death for three years in people who were unvaccinated at the start of the pandemic, when the SARS-CoV-2 strain first emerged, according to a study supported by the National Institutes of Health. These findings confirm that people with and without heart disease are at higher risk of cardiovascular events after exposure to COVID-19. However, they also suggest that the increased risk may last for three years after initial COVID-19 infection.
The study found that people with COVID-19 early in the pandemic were twice as likely to suffer a cardiovascular event, and those with severe cases of COVID-19 were nearly four times more likely. The findings were published in the journal Vascular Biology, Arteriosclerosis and Thrombosis.
This study highlights the potential long-term cardiovascular effects of COVID-19, a public health problem that continues to loom, said Dr. David Goff, PhD, director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which largely funded the study. These findings are encouraging and, if confirmed in a longer-term follow-up period, will help identify strategies to prevent heart disease in COVID-19 patients. Further studies will be needed to prove effectiveness.
This is the first study to show that an increased risk of stroke and heart attack in COVID-19 patients may be genetically linked to blood type. The researchers found that COVID-19-related hospitalization increased the risk of stroke or heart attack in patients with blood type A, B, or AB, but did not increase it for patients with blood type O, which was associated with a lower risk of severe COVID-19.
The scientists looked at data collected from more than 10,000 patients registered with UK Biobank. This large database contains biomedical information on European patients. The patients were aged 40 to 69 at the time of registration. 8,000 had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and 2,000 had been hospitalised between 1 February 2020 and 31 December 2020. No one had received a vaccine during this period, as there were no vaccines available.
The researchers compared two COVID-19 groups to nearly 218,000 people who were not affected by the disease. The researchers then followed the patients for up to three years from the time they were diagnosed with COVID-19 until they developed a heart attack or stroke.
The researchers found that even after accounting for patients with pre-existing cardiovascular disease (about 11% of both groups), the risk for COVID-19 patients was twice that of uninfected patients. It was also four times higher among patients hospitalized with serious infections. The data also show that during the first three years of follow-up, the likelihood of a major cardiac event increased significantly compared to the control group. In some cases, the increased risk was even higher than that of having an established cardiovascular risk factor, such as type 2 diabetes.
Hooman Allayee is a PhD professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He led the study. The question now is whether severe COVID-19 infection should be considered a risk factor for heart disease. This would be similar to type 2 diabetes and peripheral artery disease, in which treatment aimed at preventing cardiovascular disease might be beneficial.
Allayee points out that these findings apply primarily to people who were infected early in the pandemic. The risk of heart disease may persist or be present in people with severe COVID-19 who were diagnosed more recently, from 2021 to today.
Scientists say this study is limited because it only included patients from the UK Biobank – a predominantly white group. It is unclear whether the results would be different in a more diverse population. Further research is needed to determine whether this is the case. Future studies are needed because the participants in this study were not vaccinated. As the mechanisms of gene-virus interactions are not yet clear, studies on the relationship between COVID-19 and blood type will also be needed.
The study was supported by NIH grants R01HL148110 R01HL168493, P01HL147823, P01HL147883, P30ES007048, and R01DK132735.
The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute: The NHLBI, a world leader, conducts and supports research in diseases of the heart, blood, lungs and sleep that improves public health care and saves lives. Visit the website for more information. www.nhlbi.nih.gov.
The National Institutes of Health: The NIH is the medical research agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It includes 27 institutes and centers. The NIH, the nation's medical research agency, is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is responsible for conducting basic, translational, clinical, and other medical research. Visit the NIH for more information about its programs and services. www.nih.gov.
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