COVID is surging once again and, if you live in British Columbia, you probably already know someone sick with fever, chills and a sore throat.
As of mid-August, about one in every 19 British Columbians were enduring an infection, with or without symptoms.
Although the media routinely dismisses all COVID infections as an inconsequential nuisance, that’s not what the science says. The virus remains deadlier than the flu and repeated infections can radically change your health.
Comments closedSince 2020, the condition known as long COVID-19 has become a widespread disability affecting the health and quality of life of millions of people across the globe and costing economies billions of dollars in reduced productivity of employees and an overall drop in the work force.
The intense scientific effort that long COVID sparked has resulted in more than 24,000 scientific publications, making it the most researched health condition in any four years of recorded human history.
Long COVID is a term that describes the constellation of long-term health effects caused by infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus. These range from persistent respiratory symptoms, such as shortness of breath, to debilitating fatigue or brain fog that limits people’s ability to work, and conditions such as heart failure and diabetes, which are known to last a lifetime.
Comments closedEven as national institutions struggle to coordinate meaningful trials for possible long COVID treatments, researchers continue to tally the damage. New findings suggest that the disease’s reach isn’t merely long—it’s still growing.
Three years after their initial bouts with COVID-19, patients who’d once been hospitalized with the virus remained at “significantly elevated” risk of death or worsening health from long COVID complications, according to a paper published May 30 in Nature Medicine.
Even among those whose initial cases didn’t require a hospital stay, the threat of long COVID and several of its associated issues remained real, the researchers found. And cumulatively, at three years, long COVID results in 91 disability-adjusted life years (DALY) per 1,000 people—DALYs being a measure of years lost to poor health or premature death. That is a higher incidence than either heart disease or cancer.
Comments closedThe first study of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in a large population of adult heart-failure patients suggests that vaccinated participants are 82% more likely to live longer than their unvaccinated peers, according to an analysis presented over the weekend at the Heart Failure 2024 scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) in Lisbon, Portugal.
Comments closedAfter contracting COVID-19, patients may have higher risk of heart failure from persistent viral infection in their hearts, even without developing notable heart disease, according to study results announced by Japanese researchers on Dec. 23.
The team including researchers from Riken, Japan’s largest scientific institute, pointed out the possibility of a “heart failure pandemic” in the near future, and is stressing the need for countermeasures.
Comments closedThe severity of the infection doesn’t seem to make a difference. These complications can occur even in people who have very mild symptoms. The big surprise is how much this can affect younger people. Studies are showing that even young, active people can experience heightened risk of these complications.
High blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity: These are some of the well-known risk factors that can put people at heightened risk for heart attack and stroke.
Now some health experts say COVID-19 should be added to that list.
Comments closedOn December 23, a research team from Riken and other institutes announced the results of a study showing that after infection with the novel coronavirus, the heart may be persistently infected with the virus and the risk of heart failure may increase, even if the patient does not develop noticeable heart disease. The team points to the possibility of a sharp increase in the number of heart failure patients in the near future and calls for countermeasures to be taken.
Infection with the novel coronavirus occurs when a protruding “spike protein” on the surface of the virus binds to the ACE2 receptor on the surface of human cells. According to the team, the heart is more likely to express ACE2 compared to other organs. It has also been reported that some people infected with the novel coronavirus have reduced cardiac function, but the detailed mechanism is not known.
Comments closedA review and meta-analysis of long-term cardiac complications of long COVID finds a high prevalence of chest pain and abnormal heart rhythms (arrythmias).
Comments closedNew figures show there was a surge in deaths from heart failure, lung disease and strokes in New Brunswick in 2021, as deaths from COVID-19 were also multiplying.
Comments closedOverall, the risk of any heart complication over the course of one year was 63 percent higher in people who had gotten COVID compared with those in the contemporary control group. At the end of a year, there were 45 additional cardiovascular events—such as stroke or heart failure—per 1,000 people among those who tested positive for COVID.
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