“COVID-19 is more than a simple respiratory disease—it is a syndrome that can affect the heart”
A new study found that having persistent symptoms months after contracting COVID-19, also known as long COVID, more than doubled a person’s risk of developing cardiovascular problems.
The study, which was based on a systematic review of the literature and a meta-analysis of 11 large studies with a total of 5.8 million people, is the most thorough effort to date to look at cardiovascular problems caused by long COVID.
There are many different estimates of how many individuals have long COVID, but current studies indicate that roughly 1 in 7 Americans have had the condition.
The study linked long COVID to an increased risk of heart disease and elevated cardiovascular risk markers in imaging and diagnostic tests, as well as an increased risk of common cardiovascular symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath, palpitations, and fatigue compared to short COVID or no COVID at all.
“COVID-19 is more than a simple respiratory disease,” remarks lead author Joanna Lee, highlighting “it is a syndrome that can affect the heart.”
A total of 982 papers published between 2020 and 2022 were rigorously evaluated by GRRSP experts, who then chose 74 publications for in-depth analysis.
Out of them, they found 11 papers containing information on the cardiovascular outcomes of participants with lengthy COVID and a control group of individuals who had never had COVID-19.
Almost 450,000 of the 5.8 million people involved in the 11 studies suffered from heart problems. The risk of cardiac problems was 2.3–2.5 times greater in patients with long COVID than in the control group.
Long COVID is not defined in a single way. Long COVID was characterized in this study as having symptoms that last at least four weeks and appear at least two months after the first COVID-19 infection.
The samples included patients who already had cardiovascular illness, but the symptoms were only considered to be long-term cardiovascular consequences of COVID if they appeared after the COVID-19 infection.
For instance, if a person with a history of ischemic heart disease had a post-COVID-19 diagnosis of atrial fibrillation, they were included in the count.
The association between long COVID and heart complications may be due to chronic inflammation, which has been shown by persistently elevated inflammatory markers in people with long COVID, according to researchers. However, the study did not examine the potential biological mechanisms underlying this association.
They highlighted that a significant degree of heterogeneity across studies in terms of population and the methods of data collecting also hampered the capacity to make conclusive findings. This is a typical problem with COVID-19-related research, due to the lack of long-term data, so it is important to note.
Researchers added that more analysis will be conducted to see whether those with preexisting cardiovascular disease may have different cardiovascular risks associated with long COVID than the general population.
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