Researchers have found a list of 20 serious conditions - including stroke and heart failure - which anyone who tests positive for Covid is more likely to develop. New research published in Nature Medicine warns that people who catch coronavirus are at risk of suffering a stroke, heart failure, angina and cardiac arrest, among other conditions - even if they don't have severe symptoms.
Those who are or have been hospitalised with the virus are at an even higher risk of developing further health problems, according to research looking at more than 11 million people in the US, including 154,000 who had Covid. The study estimated the risks within a year for the 20 diseases.
Anyone who had tested positive, even with mild or no symptoms, was at significantly higher risk of the conditions, compared to those who had not been infected. The risk then increased the more serious their case was.
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People who had Covid faced a 72% higher risk of heart failure within 12 months and 4.5% went on to develop any of the 20 conditions, compared to those uninfected.
Ziyad Al-Aly, the senior study author and chief of research at the VA St Louis Health Care System, said: “We found an increased risk of cardiovascular problems in old people and in young people, in people with diabetes and without diabetes, in people with obesity and people without obesity, in people who smoked and who never smoked.
“What really worries me is that some of these conditions are chronic conditions that will literally scar people for a lifetime. It’s not like you wake up tomorrow and suddenly no longer have heart failure.”
What are the 20 conditions?
- TIA
- Atrial fibrillation
- Sinus tachycardia
- Sinus bradycardia
- Ventricular arrhythmias
- Atrial flutter
- Pericarditis
- Myocarditis
- Acute coronary disease
- Myocardial infarction
- Ischemic cardiomyopathy
- Angina
- Heart failure
- Non-ischemic cardiomyopathy
- Cardiac arrest
- Cardiogenic shock
- Pulmonary embolism
- Deep vein thrombosis
- Superficial vein thrombosis
