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When Demi Washington, a basketball player at Vanderbilt University came down with COVID-19 in late 2020, her symptoms were mild, just a runny nose. But to ensure her safe return to the court, the school required her to undergo an MRI.
The results brought Washington to tears.
Following the infection, the now college senior had developed myocarditis — when the heart muscle becomes inflamed, which can decrease the heart’s ability to pump blood. The condition can lead to stroke or heart attack, according to Mayo Clinic. Washington was not vaccinated against COVID-19 at the time.
“I was scared because any internal organ, you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I need that to live,'” she recalled to TODAY. “I didn’t really know what was going to come of it, how long was it going to take for it to resolve.”
Washington had to skip the rest of the 2020 to 2021 season, but ultimately she was grateful. “I think about the fact that Vanderbilt does do the MRI and a lot of other schools didn’t,” she told TODAY in a segment aired Feb. 9. “The fact that I could have played if we didn’t is hard and scary to think about.”
Washington’s doctor never told her that she was at risk of dying, but he did stress the importance of rest and keeping her heart rate under a certain pace. She had to wear a watch to track her activity. Even though COVID was especially new at the time, Washington said her doctor felt confident her condition was due to the coronavirus, as he’d seen something similar other college athletes.
Washington said she felt no symptoms or signs that her heart had become inflamed, nor did she have a genetic predisposition. “It (just) happened to be me,” she said. “I still don’t really know why.”
Washington has since recovered and is back to playing ball. But her experience sheds light on the thousands of young adults infected with COVID-19 whose health hasn’t rebounded as successfully.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, heart attack deaths across all age groups have become more common in the U.S., according to a September 2022 study by Cedars Sinai hospital in Los Angeles.
The age group hit the hardest? People between 25 and 44, who saw a 29.9% relative increase in heart attack deaths over the first two years of the pandemic (which means the actual number of heart attack deaths were almost 30% higher than the predicted number).
“Young people are obviously not really supposed to die of heart attack. They’re not really supposed to have heart attacks at all,” Dr. Susan Cheng, a cardiologist at Cedars Sinai and co-author of the study, told TODAY in a segment aired Feb. 9.
Adults between 45 and 64 saw a 19.6% relative increase in heart attack deaths, and those 65 and older saw a 13.7% relative increase, according to a press release from Cedars Sinai. The increase in U.S. heart attack deaths continued through the omicron surge, even though the variant is thought to cause milder illness, and spikes of heart attack deaths have aligned with the timing of COVID-19 surges in the U.S.
Los Angeles County paramedic Romeo Robles told TODAY in the Feb. 9 segment that upticks in COVID-19 would often lead to more 911 calls related to heart issues in his community.
“Surprisingly, people my age … we would find them in cardiac arrest, and it was all predicted by these waves,” he said.
Cheng called the connection “more than coincidental, that is for sure.” Explaining why, she pointed out that COVID-19 can greatly impact the cardiovascular system.
“It appears to be able to increase the stickiness of the blood and increase … the likelihood of blood clot formation,” Cheng said. “It seems to stir up inflammation in the blood vessels. It seems to also cause in some people an overwhelming stress — whether it’s related directly to the infection or situations around the infection — that can also cause a spike in blood pressure.”
The reason for the relative rise in young people in particular is unclear, but one theory, Cheng said, is that the virus’s impact on the cardiovascular system in some people may be due to an excessive immune system response and that young people are more likely to have stronger immune systems.
For COVID-19 survivors, the risk of developing a heart condition even a year after the infection, regardless of how severe the initial symptoms were, is “substantial,” according to a February 2022 study of more than 150,000 individuals with COVID-19. The risk increases even for people who don’t have any other risk factors for heart disease.
Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a physician-scientist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and co-author of the study, estimated that about 4% of people who have COVID-19 will develop a heart problem, such as irregular heartbeat, heart failure, inflammation or heart attacks.
“It’s a small number, but really, it’s not (if) you multiply that number by the huge number of people in the United States and throughout the world who had COVID-19,” he told TODAY.
What’s more, the risk of developing long COVID, including heart problems, increases with each COVID-19 infection an individual has, Al-Aly pointed out. As a result, Latino and Black communities, which have higher rates of reinfection, are especially high risk for heart problems post-COVID, Cheng said.
As doctors and other researchers continue to wade through the data on COVID-19 and heart disease, the best course of action is to avoid infection as best you can, Cheng and Al-Aly said. To do so:
If you’ve been infected with COVID-19, especially multiple times, Cheng also encouraged staying on top of your risk factors for heart disease, such as your blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar. Typical signs of heart attack, per the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, include:
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, heart attack deaths were trending downward in the United States, but the pandemic appears to have reversed the progress, according to the Cedars Sinai research.
“I’d love to say we’re … coming out on the other side and we can think of COVID more so like the common cold. Unfortunately, that is not the case. … That is eminently clear from all of the data,” Cheng said. “This is not even just like the flu. … This virus is still very different from any other virus we have seen in our lifetime.”
Maura Hohman is the senior health editor for TODAY.com and has been covering health and wellness news and trends since 2015, when she graduated from journalism school. Her byline has appeared on TODAY, NBC News, US News & World Report, People, Everyday Health, WhatToExpect.com, History.com and more. Her interests include women’s health, racial health disparities, mental health and COVID-19.
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