The administration of Covid vaccines to a wide population across the globe has helped bring Coronavirus threat in control. While the virus continues to evolve and new variants are emerging, the symptoms are milder than early pandemic years. Irrespective of the role Covid vaccines played in controlling the spread of the virus, the reports of its side effects, especially its role in triggering heart attack is often debated by common people. A new observational study published in the journal PLOS One, determines the impact of Covid-19 vaccination on mortality following heart attack or acute myocardial infarction (AMI). (Also read: Covid vaccines used in India and risk of heart attack are not related: Study)
The study concludes that Covid vaccines Covishield and Covaxin do not pose as a risk factor for a heart attack and in fact have a protective effect on heart.
“The retrospective study used data from 1,578 people admitted to G B Pant hospital in Delhi between August 2021 and August 2022. As many as 1,086 (68.8 per cent) were vaccinated against COVID-19 while 492 (31.2 per cent) were unvaccinated,” reported PTI.
Among the vaccinated group, 1,047 (96 per cent) had received two doses of the vaccine while 39 (4 per cent) had received only a single dose.
“We analysed patients detected with heart attack in our set up. Many of them were vaccinated and some of them were not so retrospectively, we started analysing them and what we saw was very surprising. When these patients were taken for vaccination, the vaccine administration was absolutely safe, they didn’t have any significant side effects that could be linked to heart attack. It was concluded that there was no association between vaccine administration and occurrence of heart attack,” says Dr Mohit Gupta, Interventional Cardiologist and Professor of cardiology, who led the study, from G B Pant Hospital.
Dr Mohit added that they found that people who were vaccinated had lesser risk of heart attack compared to unvaccinated lot which means the vaccine in fact had a protective effect for cardiovascular health.
“This study conclusively point out that what we are using is safe and if one gets vaccinated it will give protection. Covid vaccination will be like influenza vaccine which would be given every year. With new variants, vaccines will be updated,” says Dr Mohit.
While the study rules out Covid vaccine’s role in triggering heart attack, the cases are on rise after pandemic.
“India is evolving into a world capital of heart attack because of many factors and traditional factors like diabetes, obesity, hypertension, smoking are always there. Patterns and prevalence of these diseases are changing due to genetics also. Indians are more prone to heart attack than earlier. Second, factors like psychosocial stress, like anger, they are now having third highest predictive value of heart attacks. Our own analysis of 1700 patients showed 95% of population is suffering from severe to moderate stress in some way or the other. We are still bind-folded and not accepting this risk factor. 25% of heart attack population is between 18 to 35 years of age. They study telomere length or genetic length. You would be surprised that without any risk factor, their body age was 25 to 30 years, but their genetic age was 60 to 90 years. This is happening because their telomere length was completely destroyed,” says Dr Mohit Gupta.
