COVID-19 infections during 1st wave linked to higher risk of heart attack and stroke: Study

People who were diagnosed with severe COVID-19 infections from the first wave of the pandemic could face double the risk of heart attack and stroke, a new study has found.

The study, published this week in the journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology and supported by the National Institutes of Health, found the elevated risk could last for up to three years

Researchers focused on the long-term cardiovascular risks for unvaccinated people who were sick with the virus during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 and 2020.

Compared to someone who never had COVID-19, the likelihood of heart attack, stroke and death doubled for anyone who was ever ill with the virus, and was four times higher for people who required hospitalization, the study found.

The elevated danger persisted for more than three years after the initial infection, which, according to the study, posed a serious cardiovascular threat comparable to that of type 2 diabetes.

"Findings suggest severe COVID-19 infection as a catastrophic component," Dr. Hooman Allayee, the study's principal investigator, told ABC News. "Cardiovascular mortality trends from 2010 to 2019 were steadily going down. Then, all of a sudden, between 2020 and 2022, ten years of work [was] completely wiped out because of COVID-19."

People with blood types A, B and AB were especially vulnerable to increased cardiovascular risk from COVID-19, while people with type O blood had a reduced chance of facing such issues, according to the study.

"Blood type is known to be associated with heart attack and stroke risk," said Allayee, who is a professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California. "If your blood type is A, B or AB, the virus is more likely to infect you and makes these blood cells open to viral entry."

The study analyzed individuals from the UK Biobank, a large medical database consisting primarily of data taken from older, wealthier and predominantly white participants. However, similar studies looking at other populations came to nearly identical conclusions, according to Allayee.

The study emphasized the importance of COVID-19 vaccinations, Allayee said.

"No matter what vaccine you got, just six months after the vaccination or the booster, the chance of heart attack and stroke went down," he said. "But immunity wanes over time, which is why you need the boosters. If not, you could be susceptible to getting severe COVID again."

Anyone who has ever had a severe COVID-19 infection, especially if they required a hospital stay, should discuss the potentially increased health hazards caused by the virus with their health care provider, Allayee stressed.

"Talk to your doctor and start the discussion with your physician," he said. "It's not going away, so we have to start talking about it. Stay on top of your vaccinations and boosters and get regular check-ups."

Mahir Qureshi, M.D. is an internal medicine physician resident at Cooper University Hospital and a member of the ABC Medical Unit.