From Dr. Dave Clark

Here’s something that hasn’t been publicized much (yet?). If you, or anyone you know, has had COVID, they may be at increased risk of cardiovascular disease (heart and blood vessel disease) in the future and should be aware of that.

The attached article reports on a study that looked at over 153,000 people who have had COVID, compared to over 10 million controls. That gives it a huge amount of statistical significance.

The study used the VA database, which is one of the few in the U.S. that covers so many patients. Most of the data in the U.S. (unlike countries that have centralized healthcare systems) is scattered everywhere and so is essentially useless for this kind of thing.

Anyone who has had COVID is apparently now at significantly greater risk for cardiovascular disease (already the #1 killer) for an unknown period of years. Even if you’ve recovered completely, even if you only had mild disease, possibly even if you were asymptomatic, you are at higher risk. This is not just about old veterans – the VA system covers a whole range of people, including young people and families.

Please pay attention to any signs of cardiovascular symptoms and talk to your doctor. If nothing else, get your blood pressure tested once in a while.

The point of the study is that the healthcare system probably needs to get ready for an increase in heart disease patients in the future, but it also applies to individual patients as well.

The article isn’t an easy read because it’s full of statistics, but the main message is in the abstract (summary) in bold at the top of the article. You can probably also read the introduction (first two paragraphs, not in bold) and the discussion (last section of the article).

In the middle of the abstract, the authors mention some of the conditions that COVID can increase the risk of. If you’re not sure what they are, you can Google them. Kent Sepkowitz, a physician at Sloan Kettering who wrote the article for CNN that alerted me to the study said: “The extent of the differences across the 20 different cardiovascular conditions is among the greatest of any clinical study I have read. It is jaw-dropping.” Click Here for the CNN article.

Don’t panic, but do pay attention. Alert your friends. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Click Here to Read the article