If you contracted the COVID-19 virus in 2020, you may be more at risk of experiencing future heart attacks, strokes, or premature death, according to new research.
A new report published by the American Heart Association (AHA) on Wednesday found that people infected with COVID in 2020, before vaccinations, may have double the risk of experiencing those medical conditions from any cause up to three years later — even if they never showed signs of severe illness.
The risk may be even higher in people hospitalized for COVID in the first year of the pandemic, according to the findings.
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The research suggests that being hospitalized for COVID in 2020 was a”coronary artery disease risk equivalent,” which means a higher risk for future heart attacks, strokes, or death in people without a history of cardiovascular disease than the risk for people with a history who didn’t have COVID.
According to the report, the continued risk was more pronounced in people with non-O blood types — A, B and AB blood types. The study’s authors say this is one of the first examples of an interaction between genes and a pathogen that increases the risk of heart attack and stroke.
“From the get-go, we knew there was an increased risk of cardiovascular events, but we thought it might be just during the acute phase of infection,” said the study’s co-senior author, Dr. Hooman Allayee, in a statement.
“Our study shows three years out, people who got COVID during that first wave of infections are at continued increased risk for heart attacks, strokes, and dying.”
The study notes that it doesn’t include people infected after vaccines.
“COVID, despite the vaccines, is still a public health issue,” explained Allayee. “Not only does COVID infect the lungs and cause long COVID, this thing just loves the vascular system.”
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These findings came from researchers analyzing data from the UK Biobank — one of the largest health data sources in the world — for 10,005 people who tested positive for COVID or were hospitalized in the UK for the virus between February 1 and December 31, 2020.
Researchers tracked the development of heart attacks, strokes, and death from any cause for more than 1,000 days, or roughly three years, following infection.
“Regardless of disease severity, participants infected with the virus had double the risk for major cardiovascular events over the course of the study as people not infected with the virus,” reads the report. “Those hospitalized for COVID-19 faced a nearly fourfold increase in continued risk for major cardiovascular events compared to people who tested negative for COVID-19.”
The study also found that people hospitalized with COVID with no history of cardiovascular disease were seven times more likely than their COVID-negative peers to experience cardiovascular events like a heart attack within three years.
If the hospitalized patients had cardiovascular disease, they were 12 times more likely to experience another heart attack, stroke, or even death.
Allayee acknowledges that they didn’t study how COVID-19 increases the risk of a heart attack but says that previous research gives a possible answer.
A study in Nature Cardiovascular Research from 2023 found evidence of the virus in the artery walls of people who died of it. It also triggered an inflammatory response, releasing molecules known to contribute to heart attacks and strokes.
Allayee says the findings suggest the virus increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes by infecting the artery walls and settling into existing plaques.
Dr. Sandeep Das, a professor of medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine’s Division of Cardiology at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, told the AHA that these findings don’t confirm that COVID infections are causing a higher risk of heart attack or stroke because they stem from an observational, not randomized, study.
“What we can say is that there’s an association,” said Das, who was not involved in the study. “But we can’t exactly randomize people to have COVID-19 to know for sure.”
However, the AHA argues that the link between blood type, COVID-19 infection, and future cardiovascular risks supports the theory that the virus may be increasing the chances of having a heart attack or stroke.
“That, at least circumstantially, argues there’s some biology involved in creating a higher vulnerability. Observational data don’t prove causality, but they certainly don’t disprove it either,” explained Das.