Study Finds Covid-19 Spikes Linked to Increases in Heart Attacks

More than two years after the novel coronavirus was first discovered in Wuhan, China, the infectious virus is still wreaking havoc among the global population. Although most countries, with the notable exception of China, have almost wholly loosened their tight pandemic policies, the respiratory disease is still taking lives every day.

By mid-September 2022, hundreds of Americans were still losing their lives to COVID, with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, stating that the country was losing up to 375 patients per day due to the virus.

Data from the Cedars Sinai Smidt Heart Institute has now revealed that coronavirus surges were associated with a spike in heart attack deaths and reversed gains that had been made toward reducing the rate of fatal heart attacks. Heart attacks were among the leading causes of death before the pandemic gripped the world, but there had been a steady decline in fatal heart attacks in recent years.

However, data analysis from the Smidt Heart Institute has revealed that the global rate of heart attack deaths stopped trending downward and spiked as more and more people contracted the virus.

Overall, coronavirus surges lead to an increase in fatal heart attacks among all age groups, the analysis found. Even the omicron variant, which was said to be less severe, led to an uptick in fatal heart attack rates. According to the data, this spike in fatal heart attacks was more pronounced in patients aged 25 to 44, who traditionally don’t face a high risk of a heart attack.

Yee Hui Yeo, the study’s author and a physician-scientist at Cedars Sinai, says that this surge in heart attack rates reversed a decade-long decline in heart attacks across the globe. Researchers from Cedars-Sinai drew data from the CDC’s National Vital Statistics System, identifying more than 1.5 million heart attack deaths that had occurred between April 1, 2021, and worked backward, to March 31, 2012.

The researchers then compared age-related death rates before and during the pandemic to determine if there was an association between COVID infection and fatal heart attacks. They found that coronavirus infection raised the risk of a heart attack in all age groups, with adults aged 25 to 44 seeing the largest increase at 29.9% followed by adults aged 45 to 64 at 19.6% and adults aged 65 and above at 13.7%.

Yeo noted that researchers are still studying the novel virus to determine how it affects people of all ages, genders, races and ethnicity. The results of the new Cedars-Sinai study were published in the “Journal of Medical Virology.”

As equipment and software from companies such as HeartBeam Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAT) to quickly detect heart attacks becomes readily available, it will become easier for clinicians and policymakers to keep close tabs on how cardiovascular diseases are trending in different sections of the population.

NOTE TO INVESTORS: The latest news and updates relating to HeartBeam Inc. (NASDAQ: BEAT) are available in the company’s newsroom at https://ibn.fm/BEAT

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