Covid significantly increased the risk of heart attack, stroke and death up to 3 years after infection. In particular after a severe form, among people who have contracted the original strain of Sars-CoV-2 during the first wave, before the vaccines arrived. This is the conclusion of a study funded by the American National Institutes of Health (Nih) and published in the journal ‘Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology’, from which another piece of data also emerges: people with blood type 0 appear to be more protected from the serious effects of Covid-19.
Previous research has already indicated a greater probability of cardiovascular events after a Covid infection, the NIH recalls. But the new results, the government agency specifies, are the first to suggest that this increased risk could last up to 3 years after infection, at least for people who became infected during the first wave. The new work, the NIH adds, is also the first to demonstrate that the greater probability of heart attack and stroke after a severe form of Covid-19 could have a genetic component relating to blood group. The authors in fact observed that a hospitalization for Covid more than doubled the risk of heart attack or stroke among patients with group A, B or AB blood, but not in those with group 0. This is because having group 0 blood seems to be associated at a lower risk of severe Covid.
The study involved 10 thousand patients from the UK Biobank, aged between 40 and 69, of whom 8 thousand had tested positive for the pandemic coronavirus and 2 thousand had been hospitalized for severe Covid-19, between 1 February and 31 December 2020. No one had been vaccinated against Covid, because vaccines were not yet available then. The two groups were compared with a third, made up of almost 218 thousand people who had not been infected by Sars-CoV-2 in that period. The researchers then monitored patients in the first two groups from the time of Covid-19 diagnosis until they developed a heart attack or stroke, or died, for nearly 3 years. Considering people with pre-existing heart disease, equal to around 11% in both groups, scientists calculated that – compared to those who had never had Covid – the risk of heart attack, stroke and death was twice as high among those who had been infected and 4 times higher among those who had had a severe form, requiring hospitalization. Furthermore, throughout the 3 years of follow-up, the probability of a major cardiovascular event remained significantly higher in people who had had Covid, compared to controls. In some cases, the danger of heart attack or stroke was comparable to, or even greater than, that conferred by a known cardiovascular risk factor, such as type 2 diabetes.
“This study sheds new light on the potential long-term cardiovascular effects of Covid-19,” which represents “a still looming public health threat,” says David Goff, director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute , part of the NIH “These results, especially if confirmed by long-term follow-up – he adds – support efforts to identify effective heart disease prevention strategies for patients who have had a severe form of Covid-19. But they will be needed other studies to demonstrate its effectiveness”.
“Considering that over 1 billion people worldwide have already contracted the infection” from Sars-CoV-2, “the implications for global cardiac health are significant“, warns Hooman Allayee, professor of population and public health sciences at the University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles, responsible for the study. “The question now – he underlines – is to understand whether serious Covid-19 should be considered another risk factor for cardiovascular disease, just like type 2 diabetes or peripheral arterial disease.”
The authors point out that the results of the work apply mainly to people who were infected with Sars-CoV-2 at the beginning of the pandemic, while it is not clear whether the risk of cardiovascular diseases persists or can persist in those who have become seriously ill with Covid from 2021 to today. Scientists also explain that the results will need to be confirmed with further investigations on a more ethnically diverse population from that of the UK Biobank. Finally, since study participants were not vaccinated, future research will be needed to determine whether or not vaccination status influences cardiovascular risk from Covid. Studies will then be needed on the link between infection and blood type, because the mechanism of gene-virus interaction remains unclear.
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