CV risk lingers up to three years for patients who had COVID-19 before vaccine rollout, doctors say
Severe pre-vaccine era COVID-19 illness may warrant more ‘aggressive’ CVD prevention.
Patients who had COVID-19 prior to the rollout of vaccines have an increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events for up to three years after infection, US research shows.
The finding is regardless of whether they have CVD risk factors, the University of Southern California-led team says.
They used UK Biobank data to compare cardiovascular outcomes for 10,000 patients who tested positive or were hospitalised for COVID-19 before January 2021 against 218,000 controls who tested negative.
Of the COVID-19-positive patients, nearly 2000 were hospitalised with severe infection.
