How COVID contributes to heart attacks and strokes
March 12, 2024 6:46 AM Subscribe
How SARS-CoV-2 contributes to heart attacks and strokes. The virus that causes COVID-19 can infect coronary arteries and increase inflammation in atherosclerotic plaques. An NIH-funded research team, led by Dr. Chiara Giannarelli at New York University School of Medicine, analyzed coronary artery tissue samples from people who died of COVID-19 between May 2020 and May 2021. Results appeared in Nature Cardiovascular Research on September 28, 2023.
There may be some problems with our societal response to this disease being to catch it six times a year and shrug about it, yes.
posted by Artw at 7:12 AM on March 12 [29 favorites]
posted by Artw at 7:12 AM on March 12 [29 favorites]
Link to the actual paper. They used spatial artificial intelligence to identify SARS RNA in eight deceased individuals who'd had Covid-19.
posted by Klipspringer at 7:14 AM on March 12 [7 favorites]
posted by Klipspringer at 7:14 AM on March 12 [7 favorites]
I've had covid three times. I can tell it has massively lowered my energy levels and made it harder to concentrate.
posted by The Manwich Horror at 7:15 AM on March 12 [13 favorites]
posted by The Manwich Horror at 7:15 AM on March 12 [13 favorites]
Well, fuck. I just tested positive for the first time this morning, and the main fear I've had about it is all the stories about people in their forties being at a higher risk for heart attacks in the six months to a year after infection, and...
Fuck. I tried so damn hard not to get infected, and this was one of the reasons. I don't have anything witty or interesting to say, I'm just kind of overwhelmed with mortal terror.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:43 AM on March 12 [36 favorites]
Fuck. I tried so damn hard not to get infected, and this was one of the reasons. I don't have anything witty or interesting to say, I'm just kind of overwhelmed with mortal terror.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:43 AM on March 12 [36 favorites]
I can tell you that if you feel a strange tightness in your chest and a sense of doom you should not just think it was indigestion. And if you suddenly get visual migraine auras after never having them before in your life you should not just shrug them off. I mean, I did, and I'm not dead, but that's by no means assured, and I know better now. Anyway, yeah, minor heart attacks and minor strokes are just a thing we watch out for now after having covid (even just once). Good news is I stopped having those kind of things about a year after my covid infection, and is why I'm so militant about not getting it again.
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:58 AM on March 12 [11 favorites]
posted by seanmpuckett at 7:58 AM on March 12 [11 favorites]
This is a sample size of eight people?
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 8:20 AM on March 12 [22 favorites]
posted by Cpt. The Mango at 8:20 AM on March 12 [22 favorites]
the NIH press release from sept 2023 is fine as these things go, but this is one tiny. tiny TINY part of a very complex story; as mango comments, this is a tissue analysis of EIGHT cadavers which were covid-positive between 2020-2021.
as laypeople - myself included - please don't try and parse this interesting but very limited paper into self-educated clinical analysis of covid.
posted by lalochezia at 8:56 AM on March 12 [41 favorites]
Eight people is tiny, yes, but/and SARS-CoV-2 contributing to cardiovascular disease isn’t new information. This feels more like a “how” study than a “what” study and while we should be mindful of the N in assessing whether the details of the specific mechanism are right, we don’t need to be skeptical of the study’s whole premise, I don’t think. I think it’s safe to say that first sentences in this kind of brief are ~always things that ~everyone in the field can agree on, and this one begins with “COVID-19 is known to increase the risk of heart attack and stroke.”
Ghidorah, best wishes to you on recovery. Even though (IMO) we should not as a planet be tolerating this disease the way we are — it’s still the case that most people come out okay, and I hope that’s true for you.
posted by eirias at 9:27 AM on March 12 [25 favorites]
Ghidorah, best wishes to you on recovery. Even though (IMO) we should not as a planet be tolerating this disease the way we are — it’s still the case that most people come out okay, and I hope that’s true for you.
posted by eirias at 9:27 AM on March 12 [25 favorites]
I've had covid three times. I can tell it has massively lowered my energy levels and made it harder to concentrate.
Four times, most recently last summer, and me too. We in the UK haven't been offered any vaccine boosters unless we're elderly or at-risk since late 2022. We can't get Paxlovid unless we're in an at-risk group either. Current spring boosters are for ages 75+ or people with a weakened immune system. The rest of us can just keep getting it and getting it...
posted by rory at 10:17 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]
Four times, most recently last summer, and me too. We in the UK haven't been offered any vaccine boosters unless we're elderly or at-risk since late 2022. We can't get Paxlovid unless we're in an at-risk group either. Current spring boosters are for ages 75+ or people with a weakened immune system. The rest of us can just keep getting it and getting it...
posted by rory at 10:17 AM on March 12 [5 favorites]
My daughter has Long Covid and today is the 4th anniversary of her getting Covid, pre-vaccines, at age 22, very soon after graduating university and starting her young adult life, a life which is now obviously very different from what it was supposed to be.
She’s tried every specialist, every pill, every research study available to us in Toronto.
While I can appreciate the need to warn people and teach them with fear or whatever, these kinds of posts always scare the fuck out of me and wreck my week. What are we supposed to do with this information? I usually scroll on by, as I do with all of the “new research/information/possible cause/possible treatment” articles people send us that lead to nothing except more shrugs from doctors, but today I just wanted to dump this in here, because today.
posted by chococat at 10:54 AM on March 12 [15 favorites]
She’s tried every specialist, every pill, every research study available to us in Toronto.
While I can appreciate the need to warn people and teach them with fear or whatever, these kinds of posts always scare the fuck out of me and wreck my week. What are we supposed to do with this information? I usually scroll on by, as I do with all of the “new research/information/possible cause/possible treatment” articles people send us that lead to nothing except more shrugs from doctors, but today I just wanted to dump this in here, because today.
posted by chococat at 10:54 AM on March 12 [15 favorites]
Yeah, but besides the very small sample size, these people were almost entirely unvaccinated - I got my first vaccination as soon as possible, and that was in April 2021. This is certainly an area that's worth following up on, but it doesn't seem worth completely freaking out over - there are signs in other medical studies that the vaccines and boosters are having an effect of lowering the severity of various outcomes.
posted by coffeecat at 10:57 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]
posted by coffeecat at 10:57 AM on March 12 [6 favorites]
It doesn't seem surprising to me at all. This is a disease that seems to cause microclots in random parts of the body in a subset of those infected.
I suspect a lot of people are going to have reduced lifespans due to COVID. I include myself in that number---I had long-COVID issues with heart racing for three months after my first infection. It took a long time to feel right afterwards.
posted by bonehead at 11:04 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]
I suspect a lot of people are going to have reduced lifespans due to COVID. I include myself in that number---I had long-COVID issues with heart racing for three months after my first infection. It took a long time to feel right afterwards.
posted by bonehead at 11:04 AM on March 12 [4 favorites]
seanmpuckett, could you say more about migraine auras and senses of doom? (This sounds exactly like my experience, COVID included, and I had no idea that it might be related. I’d love to learn more!)
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:38 AM on March 12 [3 favorites]
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:38 AM on March 12 [3 favorites]
Here's some more positive news. SARS-CoV-2-infection- and vaccine-induced antibody responses are long lasting with an initial waning phase followed by a stabilization phase (Cell, 22 February 2024):
In summary, we show that antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination follow a classical biphasic decay with a rapid waning phase initially followed by a transition into a stabilization phase after 7 to 9 months. We also show that hybrid immunity showed better protection against breakthrough infection in both the pre-Omicron but also the post-Omicron era, and we show that breakthrough infections in vaccinated, previously naive individuals have an effect like a booster dose. These data suggest that COVID-19 mRNA vaccination does induce long-lasting spike-specific antibodies consistent with B cell biology.
posted by rory at 2:51 PM on March 12 [6 favorites]
In summary, we show that antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination follow a classical biphasic decay with a rapid waning phase initially followed by a transition into a stabilization phase after 7 to 9 months. We also show that hybrid immunity showed better protection against breakthrough infection in both the pre-Omicron but also the post-Omicron era, and we show that breakthrough infections in vaccinated, previously naive individuals have an effect like a booster dose. These data suggest that COVID-19 mRNA vaccination does induce long-lasting spike-specific antibodies consistent with B cell biology.
posted by rory at 2:51 PM on March 12 [6 favorites]
It took me about 8 months for my resting heart rate to return to its pre-Covid infection resting rate. Within a year of infection I've had a kidney stone, gone on hypertension meds and started taking a statin. Before covid the only medication I took was anti-histamines.
I only had covid once - Nov 2022 and have not been particularly cautious since (mostly due to the sheer impossibility) but I have been a crowd avoider since way before the pandemic. I still mask on public transit but that is about it.
So yeah covid infection can fuck you up. Medium and maybe also long term. Hybrid immunity does seem to be working for me so far this past 14 months or so there is at least that but I sure would like to get another booster...
posted by srboisvert at 5:24 PM on March 12
I only had covid once - Nov 2022 and have not been particularly cautious since (mostly due to the sheer impossibility) but I have been a crowd avoider since way before the pandemic. I still mask on public transit but that is about it.
So yeah covid infection can fuck you up. Medium and maybe also long term. Hybrid immunity does seem to be working for me so far this past 14 months or so there is at least that but I sure would like to get another booster...
posted by srboisvert at 5:24 PM on March 12
I had a big honkin' heart attack 07-06-2004 and went the whole dramatic scene, death, long-term coma, all the relatives showed up blah blah blah but once I came out of the coma and got my strength back I was a beast, yoga, swimming, bike riding, whatever else, I was in better shape than anyone else in whatever room we might be in, my cardiologist favorite save because I'd been dead so long and here I was, healthier than you, our yearly exam was laughing and festivity.
No reason not to have laughter and festiivity, it was me, I felt perfectly fine, all was well.
Until two years ago or three when, for no reason at all, during our yearly chuckle-fest exam and without my knowing it at all, I had lost the strength in my heart, it was weak and irregular and nary a chuckle that day, instantly he's on the phone setting me up with another cardiologist to get combo pacemaker/defibulator installed in my upper left chest, where it is comfortably resting now.
I am really, really lucky, in that we caught it in time *and* it has done what it is supposed to do, and I'm strong again.
Though scared of what's next.
I'm positive it's from covid.
My doctors cannot make a call on it. But -- why was I fine, in fact better than fine, for fifteen flippin years and then the whole thing went south?
Explain that one to me.
No one can.
No one cannot.
I'm positive it's from covid.
posted by dancestoblue at 10:39 PM on March 12 [7 favorites]
No reason not to have laughter and festiivity, it was me, I felt perfectly fine, all was well.
Until two years ago or three when, for no reason at all, during our yearly chuckle-fest exam and without my knowing it at all, I had lost the strength in my heart, it was weak and irregular and nary a chuckle that day, instantly he's on the phone setting me up with another cardiologist to get combo pacemaker/defibulator installed in my upper left chest, where it is comfortably resting now.
I am really, really lucky, in that we caught it in time *and* it has done what it is supposed to do, and I'm strong again.
Though scared of what's next.
I'm positive it's from covid.
My doctors cannot make a call on it. But -- why was I fine, in fact better than fine, for fifteen flippin years and then the whole thing went south?
Explain that one to me.
No one can.
No one cannot.
I'm positive it's from covid.
posted by dancestoblue at 10:39 PM on March 12 [7 favorites]
We learned last week (via NEJM) that people who have microplastics in their artery plaques (and that is the majority of people) are 4.5 times as likely to have a heart attack or stroke. I haven't analyzed the numbers yet (so don't quote me) but that could make microplastics the leading risk factor for heart attacks and thus the leading cause of death. Enjoy your Dasani.
posted by neuron at 10:07 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]
posted by neuron at 10:07 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]
HIV increases risk of cardiovascular disease via mechanisms that are incompletely understood.
posted by neuron at 10:11 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]
posted by neuron at 10:11 PM on March 13 [1 favorite]
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posted by seanmpuckett at 6:52 AM on March 12 [21 favorites]