Study Suggests COVID-19 Increases Risk of Heart Disease

There are plenty of reasons to want to avoid contracting COVID-19, beginning with the most obvious: no one enjoys being sick. There’s also the risk of developing Long COVID, which can have debilitating effects on certain people. A recently-published study offers one more reason to be wary of contracting COVID — namely, that it may put you at a heightened risk of heart problems for several years to follow.

The paper, published in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, used data from the U.K.’s Biobank to analyze whether COVID-19 increased the risk of a major adverse cardiac event within 1,000 days. The answer? It did — and the risk was even higher if the COVID case was severe enough to require hospitalization.

These findings have alarmed some experts in the field. In comments made to Nina Agrawal of The New York Times, Dr. David Goff of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute called the paper’s conclusions “really concerning,” and suggested that doctors take heart disease patients’ history with COVID-19 into account.

“A lot of people are at even greater risk of heart attack than they were before. And heart disease is already the leading cause of death on our planet before the pandemic,” Dr. Goff told the Times.

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In reviewing the data, the scientists ultimately determined that being hospitalized for COVID-19 “represents a coronary artery disease risk equivalent.” In their words, this also means that they’ve discovered “one of the first examples of a gene-pathogen exposure interaction for thrombotic events.” All of which suggests that if you’re concerned about cardiac health but have put off getting a booster — maybe it’s worth considering a trip to the pharmacy.