A new study shows that many people who got sick with COVID-19 in the first wave of the pandemic had an increased risk of heart attack and stroke up to three years later.
Researchers found that those who had COVID-19 early in the pandemic had double the risk of cardiovascular events. Those who had severe cases had nearly four times the risk.
The study is also the first to show that an increased risk of heart attack and stroke in COVID-19 patients might have something to do with genetics involving blood type. Researchers found that hospitalization for COVID-19 more than doubled the risk of heart attack or stroke among patients with A, B or AB blood types. Patients with blood type O did not have an increased risk and seemed to be at lower risk overall of severe COVID-19.
The study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, looked at data from 10,000 people enrolled in the UK Biobank, a large biomedical database of European patients. The patients in the study were ages 40 to 69 at the time of enrollment, and the data included 8,000 people who had tested positive for COVID-19 and 2,000 who were hospitalized with severe COVID-19 between Feb. 1, 2020, and Dec. 31, 2020. None were vaccinated because vaccines weren’t yet available.
You can read more about the study here.
Send any questions or comments to Kirk Enstrom at [email protected].