{"id":9560,"date":"2025-12-23T14:49:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T19:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/?p=9560"},"modified":"2025-12-31T11:55:49","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T16:55:49","slug":"as-h3n2-sweeps-across-canada-what-to-know-about-flus-heart-attack-risk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/as-h3n2-sweeps-across-canada-what-to-know-about-flus-heart-attack-risk\/","title":{"rendered":"As H3N2 sweeps across Canada, what to know about flu\u2019s heart attack risk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s more than just a bad cold: <a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/tag\/influenza\" target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">influenza<\/a> can also raise your risk of a heart attack shortly after an infection, medical experts are warning as the <a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/tag\/h3n2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">H3N2<\/a> strain spreads rapidly in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, flu season is coinciding with another risk factor for heart attacks \u2013 shovelling snow.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny time you get an infection, including a viral infection, there\u2019s 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,\u201d said Dr.&nbsp;Fahad Razak, internal medicine physician at St.&nbsp;Michael\u2019s Hospital and professor at the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat can have immediate effects within the weeks following an infection, resulting in things like strokes or heart attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Influenza brings with it an increased risk of heart attack and stroke, data shows.<\/p>\n<p>People are four times as likely to have a heart attack and five times more likely to have a stroke in the month after laboratory-confirmed influenza, data published in the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ahajournals.org\/journal\/jaha\" target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Journal of the American Heart Association<\/a> in October shows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s more than just a bad cold: <a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/tag\/influenza\" target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">influenza<\/a> can also raise your risk of a heart attack shortly after an infection, medical experts are warning as the <a href=\"https:\/\/globalnews.ca\/tag\/h3n2\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">H3N2<\/a> strain spreads rapidly in Canada.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, flu season is coinciding with another risk factor for heart attacks \u2013 shovelling snow.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAny time you get an infection, including a viral infection, there\u2019s 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,\u201d said Dr.&nbsp;Fahad Razak, internal medicine physician at St.&nbsp;Michael\u2019s Hospital and professor at the University of Toronto.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat can have immediate effects within the weeks following an infection, resulting in things like strokes or heart attacks.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/as-h3n2-sweeps-across-canada-what-to-know-about-flus-heart-attack-risk\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">As H3N2 sweeps across Canada, what to know about flu\u2019s heart attack risk<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[96,72,18,71,77,14,40],"class_list":["post-9560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-canada","tag-cardiovascular-disease","tag-covid-19","tag-heart-attacks","tag-influenza","tag-sars-cov-2","tag-strokes","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9560"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9564,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9560\/revisions\/9564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}