Even mild COVID-19 can increase the risk of heart problems

In 10 seconds? A large-scale study showed COVID-19 survivors to be at higher risks of experiencing cardiovascular diseases regardless of the severity of the infection.

What’s in the study? Researchers compared data from about 150, 000 individuals who fell ill with COVID-19 to over 5 million contemporary, COVID-free individuals and further 5 million healthy people from before the pandemic (2017, ‘historical cohort’) to study the disease burden a year after infection. After the first 30 days following an infection, COVID-19 survivors were found to be at an increased risk of experiencing a stroke, heart failure, and other heart complications for over a year. For example, out of every 1000 individuals studied, COVID-19 survivors had 4 more people likely to experience stroke and 10 more people to experience irregular heartbeat compared to healthy controls. This was also one of the first studies to look at the disease burden in non-hospitalized patients with mild symptoms from COVID-19 as many other studies focused only on hospitalized patients.