United States: A study on COVID has revealed that a severe COVID infection poses the same risk to a person’s heart attack or a stroke as a history of heart disease.
Scientists discovered that regarding the risk of a major cardiac event, those who contracted COVID and were shortly thereafter hospitalized were comparable to those with heart disease but no COVID history, as reporetd by HealthDay.
Long-Term Heart Risk After COVID Infection
The study further revealed that the likelihood of experiencing a major cardiac event within one to three years after any form of COVID infection is twice.
“These findings prove that COVID-19, as an upper respiratory tract infection, has other health effects and that prior COVID-19 history should be taken into consideration in Cardiovascular Disease preventive strategies and goals,” Dr. Stanley Hazen, one of the co-senior researchers, a chair of cardiovascular and metabolic sciences at Lerner Research Institute of Cleveland Clinic has noted.
At the beginning of the pandemic, it was found that the virus leads to an increased risk of blood clots and heart issues, but there is still little knowledge of how long the risk persists and if anything can be done to change it.
In this case, researchers used data collected from over 10000 patients with COVID, diagnosed between February and December in the United Kingdom, and compared their heart health with almost 218000 people without COVID.
The team determined that COVID hospitalization is as dangerous as coronary artery disease, which is an equivalent risk.
They also observed that the risk depended on a person’s blood group.
Blood Type Linked to Increased Heart Risk
Individuals with A, B, and AB blood groups experienced enhanced odds of recurrent cardiac events after severe COVID infection than the people belonging to the O blood group as per the results that have been obtained.
This implies that there are predispositions of a person developing heart issues after contracting COVID, scientists noted.
Implications for Cardiac Care Guidelines
“We’re trying to rule out other alternative explanations, but it looks like there’s really something biological going on with these specific blood groups,” said co-senior researcher Hooman Allayee, a professor of population and public health sciences and biochemistry and molecular medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine.
“Given our collective observations and that 60% of the world’s population have these non-O blood types, our study raises important questions about whether more aggressive cardiovascular risk reduction efforts should be considered, possibly by taking into consideration an individual’s genetic makeup,” Allayee added in a university news release.
According to Allayee, physicians must now consider COVID infection in addition to a patient’s overall cardiac risk, as reporetd by HealthDay.
“The question now is: Could this finding, along with subsequent studies, change international guidelines for preventive cardiac care, even in the absence of known heart disease?” Allayee said.