Iran Press/ America: The evidence is clear: COVID-19 infection is risky for the heart.
Nearly three years into the pandemic, study after study has shown that while COVID-19 initially sparked concerns about the lungs, attention is overdue for the heart, US News reported.
“I think we need to start conceptualizing and thinking of COVID as a risk factor for heart disease,” says Ziyad Al-Aly, a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis.
It’s an important trend to understand as more than 100 million Americans have had COVID-19 – a number that continues to grow each day with no signs of ceasing.
A recent analysis from the American Heart Association found that deaths related to heart disease rose significantly during 2020, the first year of the pandemic. The number of Americans who died from cardiovascular disease jumped from 874,613 deaths in 2019 to 928,741 in 2020 – topping the previous high of 910,000 recorded in 2003.
Perhaps more notable was that the age-adjusted mortality rate, which accounts for changes in the number of older adults in the population from year to year, increased in 2020 for the first time in a decade.
“COVID-19 has both direct and indirect impacts on cardiovascular health,” Michelle Albert, the American Heart Association’s volunteer president, said in a statement. “As we learned, the virus is associated with new clotting and inflammation. We also know that many people who had new or existing heart disease and stroke symptoms were reluctant to seek medical care, particularly in the early days of the pandemic.”
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