According to a new study, the coronavirus vaccine reduced the risk of serious cardiovascular events related to covid-19 (strokes, heart attacks and hospitalizations for heart disease) by approximately 40%.
These findings, the latest in a growing body of research on the vaccine’s cardiovascular health benefits, suggest that those benefits seen in previous studies have held up for years.
The study, recently published in JAMA Internal Medicine, It also suggests that the vaccine has a broader public health benefit.
According to the researchers, the vaccine slightly reduced cardiovascular conditions, hospitalizations and deaths from all causes, including those not related to Covid-19.
“This tells us that these vaccines have had beneficial effects even in people who don’t know they have contracted Covid-19,” said Ziyad Al-Aly, a physician, scientist and senior clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of the study.
Previous studies have indicated that the coronavirus vaccine reduces the incidence of heart attacks and strokes, including a study carried out in England with around 46 million adults between 2020 and 2022.
The researchers responsible for the latest findings set out to determine whether those benefits persisted in the years after the pandemic began.
“Vaccine formulas have changed, and the virus itself has also evolved over time,” Al-Aly said. However, he noted that the most recent formulations of the vaccines still protected against heart conditions.
Analysis
The study, conducted among veterans who used the Department of Veterans Affairs health system, looked at approximately one million veterans between 2024 and 2025. The research compared those who received the seasonal flu vaccine with those who chose to get both the flu and updated Covid-19 vaccines during that season. The study reviewed several types of vaccines.
The researchers followed up on the cohorts after about eight months, looking at whether they had suffered a Covid-19-associated cardiovascular event, defined as a serious heart condition contracted shortly after a coronavirus infection.
The study revealed that the group that received the Covid-19 vaccine had a 37.7% lower risk of suffering from heart conditions associated with the disease. The benefit was most notable among patients over 75 years of age and those with pre-existing conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes or chronic lung diseases.
“To me, this continues to underscore the importance of encouraging vaccination, especially among older people,” said Nisha Viswanathan, a physician and director of the long-covid program at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the study.
Why did the vaccine produce some protection against heart conditions unrelated to a Covid-19 diagnosis?
Al-Aly suggested that this trend could indicate that patients are contracting mild cases of the virus without realizing it.
“This study allows us to glimpse the hidden burden of Covid-19 that is probably still circulating in the population,” Al-Aly said.
CONTENT FOR SUBSCRIBERS
Covid-19 vaccines have also been linked to a risk of myocarditis and pericarditis, inflammation of the muscle and membrane that lines the heart, but cases are rare and usually mild, and experts have said the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risk of side effects.
*Excerpt from The Washington Post