The evidence for pandemic virus related heart risks observed since 2020.
Cardiovascular effects were noted right from the get go of the pandemic, and the evidence has only continued mounting since then. A mountain of evidence.
Covid infections increase the risk of cardiovascular problems.
Vaccination reduces the risk of post-covid cardiovascular events.
Here’s some of the published evidence of cardiac complications related to covid, in reverse chronological order dating all the way back to March 2020. (Voila, you can thank me later.)
2023
What people with heart disease should know about vaccines today By Michael Merschel, American Heart Association News Published: October 6, 2023 A research letter published in February in JACC found that among more than 1.9 million people infected with the coronavirus, vaccination was associated with a lower risk of heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular events. Flu vaccination, meanwhile, is associated with a lower risk of stroke. In an analysis published in the Journal of the American Heart Association in 2021, flu vaccination also was associated with an 18% lower chance of death from cardiovascular problems and a 25% lower chance of death from any cause.
Bowe, B., Xie, Y. & Al-Aly, Z. Postacute sequelae of COVID-19 at 2 years. Nat Med 29, 2347–2357 (21 August 2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-023-02521-2 More than 3 years after the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic, a wave of evidence suggests that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection can lead to postacute sequelae in pulmonary and broad array of extrapulmonary organ systems1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12—including increased risks and burdens of cardiovascular disorders, neurologic and mental health disorders, metabolic disorders (diabetes and dyslipidemia), kidney disorders and gastrointestinal disorders.
USA Today - What does long COVID do to kids? What we've learned after a year of research. “Many of these kids were completely healthy kids prior to the diagnosis and it can completely disrupt their life and their ability to participate in sports and school,” one researcher said. By Adrianna Rodriguez, April 5, 2023 When Monika Kalra Varma’s son started getting chronic headaches, long COVID was the last thing on her mind. But when the 9-year-old contracted COVID-19 in December 2021, Akshay Varma developed asthma, chronic headaches, heart palpitations and other symptoms that lasted for months. “We had been reading about (long COVID) for adults, we didn’t know it was really a thing for children,” said Kalra Varma, who lives in Alexandria, Virginia. If it weren’t for the pediatrician, “we may not have connected that it was long COVID.”
ABC Southern Qld: Toowoomba mum Christine Handford hopes son's death will prompt young people to get heart checks / By David Chen 2023-03-05 The Heart Foundation has also asked the federal government for heart health checks to be made available to everyone who has had a COVID-19 infection or is living with long COVID. The foundation said COVID-19 infection worsened pre-existing heart conditions and also increased the risk of developing more than 20 heart conditions including heart attack, blood clots, heart failure and stroke.
WebMD - Vaccination Reduces Post-COVID Heart Attack, Stroke Risk - Written by Lisa O’Mary Feb. 23, 2023 “To our surprise, even partial vaccination was associated with lower risk of adverse cardiovascular events,” researcher Joy Jiang said in a statement. “Given the magnitude of SARS-CoV-2 infection worldwide, we hope our findings could help improve vaccination rates, especially in individuals with coexisting conditions.”
Ars Technica: Unvaccinated more likely to have heart attack, stroke after COVID, study finds. Being fully vaccinated reduced the risk by about 41 percent. By Beth Mole - 2/21/2023 For those who had a major cardiac event, the median time of the event was 17 days after the start of a COVID-19 infection and 212 days (roughly seven months) since the last vaccine dose. Overall, the people most at risk of having a cardiac event after an infection, regardless of vaccination status, were older males with other underlying health conditions. Previous cardiac events increased the risk the most, but diabetes, liver disease, obesity, and high cholesterol were also significant risk factors.
Time: How COVID-19 Changes the Heart—Even After the Virus Is Gone By Alice Park February 18, 2023 “We found evidence, in the hearts of COVID-19 patients, abnormalities in the way calcium is handled,” says Marks. In fact, when it came to their calcium systems, the heart tissue of these 10 people who had died of COVID-19 looked very similar to that of people with heart failure. Marks plans to further explore the heart changes that SARS-CoV-2 might cause by studying how the infection affects the hearts of mice and hamsters.
2022
Jiang J, Chan L, Kauffman J, Narula J, Charney AW, Oh W, Nadkarni G; N3C Consortium. Impact of Vaccination on Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events in Patients With COVID-19 Infection. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2023 Jan 27;81(9):928–30. doi: 10.1016/j.jacc.2022.12.006. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36813689; PMCID: PMC9939951. What is the main finding? Either partial or complete vaccination is associated with a lower risk of MACE after SARS-CoV-2 infection. SARS-CoV-2 infection increases the risk of major adverse cardiac events (MACE) and long-term cardiovascular sequelae after recovery.
Bowe, B., Xie, Y. & Al-Aly, Z. Acute and postacute sequelae associated with SARS-CoV-2 reinfection. Nat Med 28, 2398–2405 (Nov 10 2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-022-02051-3 Analyses of prespecified subgroups based on vaccination status before reinfection (no vaccination, one vaccination or two or more vaccinations) showed that reinfection (compared to no reinfection) was associated with a higher risk of all-cause mortality, hospitalization, at least one sequela and sequelae in the different organ systems (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Table 4) regardless of vaccination status.
Fortune: Strokes, heart attacks, sudden deaths: Does America understand the long-term risks of catching COVID? BY CAROLYN BARBER October 06, 2022 Even the fittest are not immune. Researchers have noted a troubling pattern of sudden cardiac death in athletes in the wake of the pandemic, owing possibly to COVID-related heart complications–myocarditis and pericarditis.
Blood clot risk remains elevated nearly a year after COVID-19 By Michael Merschel, American Heart Association News Published: September 19, 2022 Researchers found that the first week after a COVID-19 diagnosis, the risk of an arterial blood clot – the kind that could cause a heart attack or ischemic stroke by blocking blood flow to the heart or brain – was nearly 22 times higher than in someone without COVID-19. That risk dropped sharply, to less than four times higher, in the second week. "Between 27 and 49 weeks, there is an approximately 30% increased risk for arterial clots, Sterne said. "But the elevation is greater for longer" for clots in veins, which include deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, when a clot travels to the lungs. In the first week after a COVID-19 diagnosis, the risk of such venous problems was 33 times higher. By the third and fourth weeks after diagnosis, the risk was still about eight times higher. And between 27 and 49 weeks later, the risk was still 1.8 times higher than in somebody who had never had COVID-19.
Nature Medicine: Long-term cardiac pathology in individuals with mild initial COVID-19 illness Published: 05 September 2022 Thus, the imaging findings suggest that inflammatory cardiac involvement after COVID may be a pathophysiological commonality shared among all individuals, regardless of the expression of cardiac symptoms. The underlying pathological mechanism for the detected increase in myocardial water content remains unclear at this stage and may relate to changes in vascular, cellular or interstitial permeability, but it is unlikely explained by direct myocyte injury/necrosis, as thought to be the core mechanism in classical viral myocarditis
2021
Heart Damage Plagues Covid Survivors a Year After Infection, Study Shows. Nearly 1-in-7 ICU survivors suffer excess major heart problems. Covid-19 will exacerbate harm caused by cardiovascular disease. Study Finds Lasting Heart Damage in Covid-19 Survivors - By Jason Gale October 7, 2021 at 12:10 AM EDT Heart damage from Covid-19 extends well beyond the disease’s initial stages, according to a study that found even people who were never sick enough to need hospitalization are in danger of developing heart failure and deadly blood clots a year later. Heart disease and stroke are already the leading causes of death worldwide. The increased likelihood of lethal heart complications in Covid survivors -- who number in the hundreds of millions globally -- will add to its devastation, according to the study, which is under consideration for publication by a Nature journal.
Viewpoint: Here’s Why COVID-19 Is Much Worse Than Flu - October 1, 2021 - Kevin Kavanagh, MD SARS-CoV-2 targeting the cardiovascular system of the body should be a given. It has been known for a long time that ACE receptors are involved in cardiovascular regulation. ACE inhibitors and ACE II blockers have long been used to treat high blood pressure. This is the same pathway the virus infects. Thus, there are multiple presentations of SARS-CoV-2 including pulmonary, cardiac, gastrointestinal (GI), and central nervous system (CNS).
2020
Covid-19 Is Creating a Wave of Heart Disease Emerging data show that some of the coronavirus’s most potent damage is inflicted on the heart. By Haider Warraich Dr. Warraich is a cardiologist. Aug. 17, 2020 I recently treated one Covid-19 patient in his early 50s. He had been in perfect shape with no history of serious illness. When the fevers and body aches started, he locked himself in his room. But instead of getting better, his condition deteriorated and he eventually accumulated gallons of fluid in his legs. When he came to the hospital unable to catch a breath, it wasn’t his lungs that had pushed him to the brink — it was his heart. Now we are evaluating him to see if he needs a heart transplant. An intriguing new study from Germany offers a glimpse into how SARS-CoV-2 affects the heart. Researchers studied 100 individuals, with a median age of just 49, who had recovered from Covid-19. Most were asymptomatic or had mild symptoms. An average of two months after they received the diagnosis, the researchers performed M.R.I. scans of their hearts and made some alarming discoveries: Nearly 80 percent had persistent abnormalities and 60 percent had evidence of myocarditis. The degree of myocarditis was not explained by the severity of the initial illness. Though the study has some flaws, and the generalizability and significance of its findings not fully known, it makes clear that in young patients who had seemingly overcome SARS-CoV-2 it’s fairly common for the heart to be affected. We may be seeing only the beginning of the damage.
STAT - Covid-19 infections leave an impact on the heart, raising concerns about lasting damage - By Elizabeth Cooney July 27, 2020 These were relatively young, healthy patients who fell ill in the spring, Valentina Puntmann, who led the MRI study, pointed out in an interview. Many of them had just returned from ski vacations. None of them thought they had anything wrong with their hearts. “The fact that 78% of ‘recovered’ [patients] had evidence of ongoing heart involvement means that the heart is involved in a majority of patients, even if Covid-19 illness does not scream out with the classical heart symptoms, such as anginal chest pain,” she told STAT. She is a cardiologist at University Hospital Frankfurt. “In my view, the relatively clear onset of Covid-19 illness provides an opportunity to take proactive action and to look for heart involvement early.”
Politico - First recorded Covid death in U.S. was from massive heart attack, autopsy says. By Debra Kahn 04/25/2020 The woman had reported flu-like symptoms in the days leading up to her death, the autopsy says. She was mildly obese and had a mildly enlarged heart, according to the autopsy, but had no coronary heart disease or clotting that would have caused a heart attack. The autopsy found that blood had collected in the sac around her heart, leading to pressure on the heart that caused it to rupture.
The Harvard Gazette - Coronavirus and the heart - Ekaterina Pesheva HMS Communications Date April 14, 2020 The ways in which the new coronavirus provokes cardiac injury are neither that new nor surprising, according to Harvard Medical School physician-scientists Peter Libby and Paul Ridker. The part that remains unclear is whether SARS-CoV-2 is somehow more virulent toward the heart than other viruses. Libby and Ridker, who are practicing cardiologists at Brigham and Women’s, say COVID-19-related heart injury could occur in any several ways.
Scientific American - Heart Damage in COVID-19 Patients Puzzles Doctors - Up to one in five hospitalized patients have signs of heart injury. Cardiologists are trying to learn whether the virus attacks the organ By Markian Hawryluk, Kaiser Health News on April 6, 2020 As more data comes in from China and Italy, as well as Washington state and New York, more cardiac experts are coming to believe the COVID-19 virus can infect the heart muscle. An initial study found cardiac damage in as many as 1 in 5 patients, leading to heart failure and death even among those who show no signs of respiratory distress.
The New York Times - A Heart Attack? No, It Was the Coronavirus - Cardiologists are seeing infected patients whose worst symptoms are not respiratory, but cardiac. By Gina Kolata March 27, 2020 “We were thinking lungs, lungs, lungs — with us in a supportive role,” said Dr. John Rumsfeld, chief science and quality officer at the American College of Cardiology. “Then all of a sudden we began to hear about potential direct impact on the heart.” A report on heart problems among coronavirus patients in Wuhan, China, was published in JAMA Cardiology on Friday. The study, led by Dr. Zhibing Lu at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, found that 20 percent of patients hospitalized with Covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, had some evidence of heart damage. Many were not known to have underlying heart disease. But they often had abnormal electrocardiograms, like the patient in Brooklyn, in addition to elevated troponin levels, which sometimes soared to levels seen in patients with heart attacks.
Thank you very much for compiling this!