CLEVELAND — Those who've had any type of COVID-19 infection were twice as likely to have a major cardiac event, such as heart attack, stroke or even death, for up to three years after diagnosis.
That's according to new research from Cleveland Clinic and the University of South California.
Researchers found the risk was significantly higher for patients hospitalized for COVID-19 and was even more of a factor than a previous history of heart disease.
"I now routinely incorporate a COVID infection into part of my preventive cardiovascular risk assessment," said co-senior study author Stanley Hazen, M.D.,Ph.D., chair of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences in Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute and co-section head of Preventive Cardiology. "And if the person answers, yes, it's all the more reason to be aggressive with their monitoring their cholesterol levels, their blood pressure control, making sure their diabetes is well treated because heart disease is the number one killer and COVID is now just yet another risk factor for heart disease."
Previous research has shown that people who have A, B or AB blood types were also more susceptible to contracting COVID-19.
The study found further genetic analysis also revealed individuals with a blood type other an O (such as A, B or AB) were twice as likely to experience an adverse cardiovascular event after COVID-19 than those with an O-blood type.
The researchers got the data by using UK Biobank data from 10,005 people who had COVID-19 and 217,730 people who did not get infected between February to December 2020.
The findings, published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology show that the long-term risk associated with COVID-19 “continues to pose a significant public health burden” and that further investigation is needed, according to the authors.