Tag: strokes

Published by: Global News
Published on: December 23, 2025
By Uday Rana

It’s more than just a bad cold: influenza can also raise your risk of a heart attack shortly after an infection, medical experts are warning as the H3N2 strain spreads rapidly in Canada.

At the same time, flu season is coinciding with another risk factor for heart attacks – shovelling snow.

“Any time you get an infection, including a viral infection, there’s the release in your body of molecules that both trigger inflammation and sustain inflammation. And part of that is an increased tendency for your blood to clot,” said Dr. Fahad Razak, internal medicine physician at St. Michael’s Hospital and professor at the University of Toronto.

“That can have immediate effects within the weeks following an infection, resulting in things like strokes or heart attacks.”

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cardiovascular disease

Covid-19 may increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and deaths for three years after an infection, study suggests

Published October 9, 2024

Published by: CNN
Published on: October 9, 2024
By Brenda Goodman

Covid-19 could be a powerful risk factor for heart attacks and strokes for as long as three years after an infection, a large new study suggests.

The study was published Wednesday in the medical journal Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. It relied on medical records from roughly a quarter of a million people who were enrolled in a large database called the UK Biobank.

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data suppression

There’s a gaping hole in Canada’s COVID tracking

Published August 22, 2024

Published by: Toronto Star
Published on: August 22, 2024
By Iris Gorfinkel

The Government of Canada’s website tracks the number of hospitalizations and deaths from acute COVID-19. What it fails to include are the hospitalizations and deaths that result from COVID’s longer-term health consequences.

Even mild cases carry risk, but COVID most frequently wallops people after severe cases, especially when hospitalized. Of the nearly 300,000 Canadians hospitalized so far, over half likely have — or will — suffer life-changing health consequences, sometimes years after having recovered from the acute illness. These risks climb with repeated infections.

Hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 are often delayed. Like high blood pressure, SARS CoV-2 can gradually damage the inner lining of blood vessels. This by itself, is painless. While it happens to people following mild cases of COVID, it’s far more likely after severe ones, especially after hospitalization. This doubles the downstream risk of having a heart attack, stroke or blood clot in the lung. It triples the risk of developing an abnormal heart rhythm, including atrial fibrillation.

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Quebec

Analysis: Quebec in midst of new COVID-19 summer wave

Published July 7, 2024

Published by: Montreal Gazette
Published on: July 7, 2024
By Aaron Derfel

Quebec is now witnessing — as is the case across North America — an uptick in COVID-19 hospitalizations, reinforcing the notion that SARS-CoV-2 is still not yet a fully seasonal virus and sending vaccine manufacturers racing to develop COVID shots for this fall that will guard against the latest sub-variants.

The province reported a total of 671 hospitalizations with and for COVID-19 as of July 5. That’s up from a low of 400 such hospitalizations on April 20 in Quebec. The number of patients in emergency rooms testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 is also rising, according to the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ).

More and more Quebecers are testing positive for COVID-19, with the percentage rising to 12.9 per cent as of June 30, according to the INSPQ. That this is occurring during summer suggests that SARS-CoV-2 is still far from a seasonal virus like the flu, a view supported by doctors and experts in the field.

“COVID is not over,” Dr. Susan Kuo, a British Columbia family physician, told the CBC on Friday. “This is the summer. It’s July. It’s not usually a time that we’re seeing so many people that are sick. What this tells us is that COVID is not a seasonal virus.”

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long COVID

COVID can cause new health problems to appear years after infection, according to a study of more than 130,000 patients

Published May 30, 2024

Published by: Fortune
Published on: May 30, 2024
By Carolyn Barber

Even 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.

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cause of death

COVID-19 ‘Radically’ Changed the Leading Causes of Death

Published April 5, 2024

Published by: Time
Published on: April 5, 2024
By Alex Tanzi

COVID-19 became the second leading cause of death globally in the year after it was declared a pandemic, according to a study published in the Lancet.

While heart disease remained the top killer, COVID “radically altered” the main five causes of death for the first time in 30 years, displacing stroke, the publication said. In 2021, 94 in every 100,000 people died from COVID, on an age-standardized basis.

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Why some doctors see COVID as a new risk factor for cardiovascular disease

Dr. Peter Liu, chief scientific officer and vice-president of research at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute.

cardiovascular disease

Why some doctors see COVID as a new risk factor for cardiovascular disease

Published December 22, 2023

Published by: Ottawa Citizen
Published on: December 22, 2023
By Elizabeth Payne

The 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.

—Dr. Peter Liu, University of Ottawa Heart Institute

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.

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cardiovascular disease

Meta-analysis reveals high rates of heart complications in long-COVID patients

Published November 30, 2023

Published by: CIDRAP
Published on: November 30, 2023
By Mary Van Beusekom

A review and meta-analysis of long-term cardiac complications of long COVID finds a high prevalence of chest pain and abnormal heart rhythms (arrythmias).

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air pollution

Air Pollution Is Really Dangerous, Even More New Evidence Shows

Published November 23, 2023

Published by: Scientific American
Published on: December 1, 2023
By Jesse Greenspan

PM_2.5 particles are tiny enough to enter the bloodstream and lodge in the lungs, where they contribute to respiratory problems such as asthma. They also can prompt heart attacks and strokes. And they have been linked to diabetes, obesity and dementia and may exacerbate COVID.

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cardiovascular disease

How SARS-CoV-2 contributes to heart attacks and strokes

Published October 24, 2023

Published by: NIH Research Matters
Published on: October 24, 2023

COVID-19 is known to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. The intense inflammation that occurs throughout the body in severe cases likely contributes to this increased risk. But it’s not clear whether SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, also affects blood vessels directly.

To find out, an NIH-funded research team, led by Dr. Chiara Giannarelli at New York University School of Medicine, analyzed coronary artery tissue samples from eight people who died of COVID-19 between May 2020 and May 2021. Results appeared in Nature Cardiovascular Research on September 28, 2023.

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cardiovascular disease

SARS-CoV-2 can infect coronary arteries and trigger heart attack, stroke, study suggests

Published September 29, 2023

Published by: CIDRAP
Published on: September 29, 2023
By Mary Van Beusekom

SARS-CoV-2 can directly infect the arteries of the heart, inflaming the fatty plaque inside and raising the risk of heart attack and stroke, suggests a small study published yesterday in Nature Cardiovascular Research.

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cardiovascular disease

SARS-CoV-2 infects coronary arteries, increases plaque inflammation

Published September 28, 2023

Published by: National Institutes of Health
Published on: September 28, 2023

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, can directly infect the arteries of the heart and cause the fatty plaque inside arteries to become highly inflamed, increasing the risk of heart attack and stroke, according to a study funded by the National Institutes of Health. The findings, published in the journal Nature Cardiovascular Research, may help explain why certain people who get COVID-19 have a greater chance of developing cardiovascular disease, or if they already have it, develop more heart-related complications.

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immune dysfunction

Covid may have permanently damaged people’s immunity

Published September 13, 2023

Published by: 1News
Published on: September 13, 2023

Covid infections are putting people at higher risk of diabetes, strokes, heart disease and other long-term illnesses – but experts warn it may be decades before the full impact is known.

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cardiovascular disease

A spike in N.B. heart and stroke deaths in 2021 cited as COVID’s handiwork

Published September 12, 2023

Published by: CBC News
Published on: September 12, 2023
By Robert Jones

New 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.

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cardiovascular disease

COVID-19 took a toll on heart health and doctors are still grappling with how to help

Published August 10, 2023

Published by: The Canadian Press / The Associated Press
Published on: August 10, 2023
By Lauran Neergaard

Heart attack-caused deaths rose during every virus surge. Worse, young people aren’t supposed to have heart attacks but Cheng’s research documented a nearly 30% increase in heart attack deaths among 25- to 44-year-olds in the pandemic’s first two years.

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Scientists Are Just Beginning to Understand COVID-19’s Effect On the Brain

Published July 17, 2023

Time

July 17, 2023

The list of neurocognitive issues that Meropol’s team and other researchers must track is extensive: cognitive decline, changes in brain size and structure, depression and suicidal thinking, tremors, seizures, memory loss, and new or worsened dementia have all been linked to previous SARS-CoV-2 infections. In some cases, these longer-term problems occur even in patients with relatively mild COVID-19.

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cardiovascular disease

After N.B.’s deadliest year, COVID-related strokes and heart attacks are in the spotlight

Published May 18, 2023

Published by: CBC News
Published on: May 18, 2023
By Robert Jones

Infection control epidemiologist Colin Furness said rising deaths from heart attacks and strokes increasingly appear to be related to damage caused by COVID-19 infections.

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pandemic myths

Ten COVID Facts Health Officials Dangerously Downplay

Published December 21, 2022

Published by: The Tyee
Published on: December 21, 2022
By Andrew Nikiforuk

Do not listen to powers that be who pretend that getting infected with COVID multiple times is now no big deal. They’re asking you to lower your guard for a nasty virus that can invade the brain, disregulate the immune system and damage the vascular system.

This strategy has led to predictable results — more direct deaths, more excess deaths, more disease and some 1.4 million Canadians reporting some form of long COVID over the last two years.

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July 17, 2023

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