COVID-19 increases the risk of heart conditions up to a year later

The people who passed the COVID-19 are at increased risk of developing cardiovascular complications within the first year after infection, a study by researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine has revealed.

The research, which has been published in ‘Nature Medicine’, indicates that some of these problems are coronary artery disease, heart attack, heart failure or even death.

“We wanted to build on our previous research on the long-term effects of COVID by taking a closer look at what’s going on in people’s hearts. What we are seeing is not good. COVID-19 can cause serious cardiovascular complications and death. The heart does not easily regenerate or repair itself after heart damage. These are diseases that will affect people for life.”has commented the main author of the investigation, Ziyad Al-Aly.

In this sense, the researcher points out that this situation has contributed to 15 million new cases of heart disease. The research team has had data on more than 153,000 people who had tested positive for COVID-19 at some point from March 1, 2020 to January 15, 2021, and who had survived the first 30 days of the illness.

“What is most notable is that people who have never had heart problems and who were considered low risk are also developing heart problems after COVID-19. ; men and women; people of all races; with obesity and people without it; people with diabetes and those without; people with prior heart disease and no prior heart disease; people with mild COVID infections and those with more severe COVID who needed to be hospitalized for it,” has detailed Al-Aly.

In fact, heart disease, including heart failure and death, has been identified as occurring in four percent more people who had contracted the virus. Specifically, people infected with the virus were 55 percent more likely than people without COVID-19 to experience a major adverse cardiovascular event, including heart attack, stroke and death.