Analyzing the largest data sets from the United States, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai revealed that COVID-19 vaccination is associated with fewer heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular problems among infected people with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
The research letter, "Impact of vaccination on major adverse cardiovascular events in patients with COVID-19 infection," was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology .
Additionally, the research will be presented at a poster session in New Orleans, LA, at the American College of Cardiology’s 72nd Annual Scientific Session in conjunction with the World Heart Federation’s World Congress of Cardiology.
It is the first study to examine both full and partial vaccination and the link to major adverse cardiac events (MACE) in the United States, confirming similar analyzes previously conducted using the Korean COVID-19 registry. 19. The researchers used the National COVID Cohort Collaborative (N3C) database, the largest national comprehensive database on COVID-19. Since its inception in 2020, the N3C has continually collected and harmonized electronic health record data from institutions across the country. 1,934,294 patients were included in this study, 217,843 of whom received mRNA vaccine formulations from Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna or viral vector technology from Johnson & Johnson. Cox proportional hazards, a statistical technique, was implemented to evaluate the association of vaccination with MACE.
“We sought to clarify the impact of prior vaccination on cardiovascular events among people who develop COVID-19 and found that, particularly among those with comorbidities, such as prior MACE, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol, liver disease and obesity, there is an association with a lower risk of complications. “While we cannot attribute causality , it is supporting evidence that vaccination may have beneficial effects on a variety of post-COVID-19 complications,” said lead author Girish N. Nadkarni, MD, MPH, Irene and Dr. Arthur M. Fishberg Professor of Medicine at Icahn Mount Sinai, Director of the Charles Bronfman Institute for Personalized Medicine and System Chief, Division of Digital and Data-Driven Medicine (D3M), Department of Medicine.
"To our surprise, even partial vaccination was associated with a lower risk of adverse cardiovascular events," said the study’s first author, Joy Jiang, an MD/PhD candidate in Dr. Nadkarni’s lab. “Given the magnitude of SARS-CoV-2 infection around the world, we hope that our findings can help improve vaccination rates, especially in people with coexisting conditions.”
Further work will be needed to elucidate the mechanisms involved from an immunological perspective and clarify the role of SARS-CoV-2 subtypes and reinfections in their relationship to MACE risk.
Additional co-authors are Lili Chan, MD, MS; Justin Kauffman, Bachelor of Science; Jagat Narula, MD, PhD; Dr. Alexander W. Charney, MD; and Wonsuk Oh, PhD, all of Icahn Mount Sinai.
The work was supported, in part, by funds from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases of the National Institutes of Health, grant numbers K23DK124645 and T32DK007757, and by the TL1 Career Development Award, 1TL1TR004420-01.
