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A new study says that COVID-19 can be a major risk factor for heart attacks and strokes for as long as three years after an infection. The study was published in the medical journal Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. For the study, the researchers used data from a large database, the UK Biobank.

The researchers identified more than 11,000 people who had tested positive for COVID-19 and had documented in their medical records in 2020. Nearly 3,000 of them of them had been hospitalized for their infections. The researchers then compared these groups with more than 222,000 others in the same database who didn’t have a history of COVID-19 during the same time.

The study revealed that people who had the COVID infection in 2020 before there were vaccines, had twice the risk of a major cardiac event like a heart attack or stroke or death for almost three years after their illness, compared with the people who didn’t test positive.

Also, if a person has a severe infection, the risk of a major heart event was higher, more than three times higher, than for people without COVID in their medical records.

For people who needed to be hospitalised for COVID, there was a potent risk factor for future heart attacks and strokes as diabetes or peripheral artery disease or PAD.

The study also found that the increased heart risks from infection didn’t reduce over time. Dr Stanley Hazen, study author who chairs the Department of Cardiovascular & Metabolic Sciences at the Cleveland Clinic said, “There’s no sign of attenuation of that risk. That’s actually one of the more interesting, I think, surprising findings.”

According to a report in CNN, the researchers involved in the study say they don’t know exactly why COVID has such apparently long-lasting effects on the cardiovascular system.

Dr. Hooman Allayee, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and study author said, “There might just be something that COVID does to the artery walls and the vascular system that is sustained damage and just continues to manifest over time.”

Allayee said that COVID may be destabilizing plaques that are building wCovidithin the walls of arteries and may make them more prone to rupturing and causing a clot.

The researchers also say that certain blood types have a higher risk of cardiovascular diseases. People with O-type blood seem to be a bit protected. People with O-type blood who were hospitalized for COVID didn’t have a high risk of heart attack or stroke as those with A, B or AB blood types.

However, this doesn’t mean they didn’t have any risks. Hazen said, “They were still at higher risk of heart attacks and strokes, but their blood type was just another variable to consider.”

Hazen said that there was some hopeful news in the study, too. People who were hospitalized for COVID but who were also taking low-dose aspirin had no increase in the likelihood of a subsequent heart attack or stroke. That means the risk can be mitigated.

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