People who have had Covid are more likely to suffer from chest pains afterwards, a study into the long term effects of the virus has found.
Even patients who had mild cases can have long term health problems for “years” stated researchers at Intermountain Health, who presented their findings at the American College of Cardiology’s 2023 Scientific Conference.
The study said that 19% of adults in the United States who had suffered from the virus went on to have “long Covid” - which meant having symptoms four weeks or more after the initial infection.
And patients were more likely to have chest pains in the six months to a year after having had Covid.
Researchers made the findings after studying 150,000 people for cardiovascular symptoms in Salt Lake City for the impact of long Covid.
“Many COVID-19 patients experience symptoms well beyond the acute phase of infection,” said Heidi T. May, PhD, cardiovascular epidemiologist at Intermountain Health and principal investigator of the study.
She said that there was no notable increase in the number of heart attacks or strokes but warned that the chest pains could go on to lead to issues in the future.
“While we didn’t see any significant rates of major events like heart attack or stroke in patients who had an initial mild initial infection, we did find chest pains to be a persistent problem, which could be a sign of future cardiovascular complications.”
In the Intermountain study there were 150,000 people who tested positive for Covid between March 20202 and the end of December, 2021, and they were compared to the same number who tested negative in that period. While for historical context another 150,000 people were considered during 2018 and 2019 to see how they reported cardiovascular symptoms.
A press release from the researchers said: “The Intermountain research team found that at six months and one-year intervals, patients who tested positive for COVID-19 had significantly higher rates of experiencing chest pain, but saw no other increases in cardiovascular events.”
Dr May continued: “As of right now, the symptoms aren’t necessary translating into hard outcomes, but that’s something that will need to be reassessed over time.
“It could be that lasting effects of infection on the cardiovascular system are hard to quantify in terms of diagnoses or other events in the short-term and won’t be realized until longer follow up.”
Meanwhile in the UK, cases of Covid rose 6% in the latest statistics for the week ending February 21, according to data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) states.
