People who have been infected with COVID-19 are at increased risk of heart disease a year after infection, researcher Ziyad Al-Aly said in an interview published by Public Health.
Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology and chief of the Research and Education Service of the St. Louis Veterans Affairs Health Care System, published a study noting that people who have been infected with COVID-19 have a significant risk of developing heart problems regardless of whether the infection was mild or severe .
“It was really telling that the risk was also evident in people who didn’t have severe COVID-19 or required hospitalization. People who contracted coronavirus and were asymptomatic, or who contracted COVID-19 that was so mild that they could take care of it at home, without going to the doctor, developed a higher risk of heart problems a year later.
According to research, people who have had COVID are more likely to have arrhythmias (irregular heartbeats, either too fast or too slow), atrial fibrillation (a fast heartbeat in a particular pattern), and have even been shown to have a higher risk of stroke, blood clots in the legs and lungs, and heart failure or heart attacks.
Even the research revealed that the risks of heart problems were also high for people who were athletic and healthy who contracted the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus .
“I started out thinking that the risk was going to be more pronounced and evident in people who were heavy smokers or had diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease or some. We found that even in people who didn’t have any heart problems to begin with, were athletic, and had no risk factors, COVID-19 affected them in such a way that they manifested a higher risk of heart problems,” Ziyad Al-Aly said.
Why did COVID unleash heart disease?
According to the researcher, it is possible that COVID-19 attacks the endothelial cells, which line the vessels of the heart.
“Some of these cells can die and eventually facilitate the formation of blood clots and blockages of the arteries or vessels of the heart. There are several other mechanisms that revolve around something called the ACE receptor. The virus has something called a spike protein, which is like a key that activates a lock: the ACE receptor. That allows the virus to enter cells, including heart cells,” he said.
The study was carried out with more than 11 million people and showed that it does not matter the sex, age or race of the people, since the risk of presenting heart disease is generalized for all the people who presented COVID pictures.
“We did subgroup analyzes to see what would happen to only women, only men, only black or white people, people under a certain age or over a certain age. In general, we saw an increased risk of heart problems,” she warned.
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