COVID-19 may attack arteries, increase risk to heart, study finds
Even a mild infection with COVID-19 can promote clogged arteries, increasing the risk of heart attack in some people, a new study says.
Infection with the COVID-19 virus is associated with rapid growth of plaque in arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle, also called coronary arteries, researchers reported in a new study published Tuesday in the journal Radiology.
Overall, COVID-19 patients were more likely to develop plaques that caused a heart attack or required a procedure to reopen the artery, results show.
What's more, this all occurred in people whose COVID-19 was not severe enough to require hospitalization.
The inflammation associated with the infectious respiratory disease is the most likely culprit behind this rapid growth of arterial plaque, researchers said.
"Inflammation following COVID-19 can lead to ongoing plaque growth, particularly in high-risk, noncalcified plaques," senior researcher Dr. Junbo Ge, director of cardiology at Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University in Shanghai, China, said in a news release.
Non-calcified plaques are made of cholesterol and fat. They're more likely to rupture and block off blood flow, causing a heart attack.
"It's crucial to anticipate a heavier cardiovascular patient burden in the future as most infected individuals recover from acute SARS-CoV-2 infection," Ge added.
For the study, researchers analyzed repeated CT scans performed on more than 800 patients. The scans included 329 patients imaged prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and 474 patients imaged during the pandemic.
Overall, 690 patients eventually contracted COVID-19, while 113 remained uninfected, the study says. None of the patients who caught COVID-19 had an infection serious enough to land them in the hospital.
Among all the patients, researchers found nearly 2,600 lesions in coronary arteries that indicate plaque buildup. There were more than 2,100 in COVID-19 patients compared with 480 in uninfected participants.
Plaques grew more rapidly in COVID-19 patients, increasing by 0.9% a year compared with 0.6% a year among the uninfected, results show.
COVID-19 patients were also more likely to have high-risk plaques, 21% versus 16%, and heart-related inflammation, 27% versus 20%, researchers found.
Finally, COVID-19 patients were more likely to develop plaques that led to either heart-related death, a heart attack or the need to surgically reopen a clogged artery -- 10% compared to 3% in the uninfected.
These effects persist after a COVID-19 infection regardless of other factors like age, blood pressure or diabetes, Ge said.
"Patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection are at increased risk for myocardial infarction, acute coronary syndrome and stroke for up to a year," Ge said.
If these findings prove valid, the world needs to brace itself for a future wave of heart disease caused by the pandemic, according to an editorial accompanying the study.
"From a public health perspective, the association between mild COVID-19 infection, plaque progression, and cardiovascular events is concerning as we approach 800 million confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide," the editorial, co-written by Jonathan Weir-McCall, a senior lecturer in cardiac radiology at King's College London, says.
More information
The Cleveland Clinic has more on heart problems after COVID-19.
Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.
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