The risk of heart failure increased by 72%, or around 12 more people in the COVID-19 group per 1,000 studied. For example, they were 52% more likely to have had a stroke than the contemporary control group, meaning that, out of every 1,000 people studied, there were around 4 more people in the COVID-19 group than in the control group who experienced stroke. People who had recovered from COVID-19 showed stark increases in 20 cardiovascular problems over the year after infection. The researchers compared more than 150,000 veterans who survived for at least 30 days after contracting COVID-19 with two groups of uninfected people: a group of more than five million people who used the VA medical system during the pandemic, and a similarly sized group that used the system in 2017, before SARS-CoV-2 was circulating.
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“The risk was there.”Īl-Aly and his colleagues based their research on an extensive health-record database curated by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. Louis, Missouri, and the chief of research and development for the Veterans Affairs (VA) St. “It doesn’t matter if you are young or old, it doesn’t matter if you smoked, or you didn’t,” says study co-author Ziyad Al-Aly at Washington University in St. What’s more, the risk was elevated even for those who were under 65 years of age and lacked risk factors, such as obesity or diabetes.
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Researchers found that rates of many conditions, such as heart failure and stroke, were substantially higher in people who had recovered from COVID-19 than in similar people who hadn’t had the disease. Credit: Living Art Enterprises/Science Photo LibraryĮven a mild case of COVID-19 can increase a person’s risk of cardiovascular problems for at least a year after diagnosis, a new study 1 shows. The risk of 20 diseases of the heart and blood vessels is high for at least a year after a COVID-19 diagnosis.