Latest data revealed that people who have had COVID-19 have an increased risk of heart disease 12 months after infection, according to a report published by Web MD.
Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, who directs the Clinical Epidemiology Center at the Veterans Affairs St. Louis Health Care System, said: “It’s evident in people at high risk, but it was also as clear as the sun, even in people who have no cardiovascular risk whatsoever.
“So, the risk confirmed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus seems to spare almost no one.”
The risks and burdens were also found in patients who were never hospitalized – a group that represents the majority of people with COVID-19, says Al-Aly.
“Given the number of patients in the U.S. who have been infected with COVID, this could represent a significant chronic burden on the health care system, particularly as health care professionals leave the profession.”
For the study, the investigators used national VA databases to analyze health data of 153,760 veterans with COVID-19 between March 1, 2020 and January 2021. They were compared with another group of 5.6 million veterans who never tested positive for COVID-19 and a third group of 5.8 million veterans using the system in 2017 prior to the pandemic.
As the study, published in Nature Medicine, found, the risk of a major heart event, which included heart attack, stroke, and all-cause mortality, was 4% higher in people who had been infected with COVID-19.
