People with Flu at Higher Risk of Heart Attack, Study Reveals
People suffering from influenza are at a higher risk of suffering from a heart attack.
According to a report released this week, people, especially adults, who have had the flu, are six times prone to a heart attack. The study, which was released by New England Journal of Medicine, was based on about 20,000 adult cases of laboratory-confirmed influenza infection in Ontario, Canada between 2009 and 2014.
The results have revealed that 332 patients suffered a heart attack within a year of having been sick with influenza B infections. Of the 332 people included in the study, it was discovered that 69 percent did not have a flu shot.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"Our findings are important because an association between influenza and acute myocardial infarction reinforces the importance of vaccination," revealed Jeff Kwong, the lead author of the study and a scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and Public Health Ontario.
It has been observed that the risk for a heart attack was higher within the first week of acquiring influenza. While other respiratory viruses were also seen as factors for the increased risk of a heart attack, they were not as potent as the flu virus.
"It's not every day you see a six-fold increase in the risk during the first seven days of lab-confirmed influenza. We were also surprised the risk dropped off to nothing by day 8 and beyond," Kwong said.
Because of the findings, Kwong has urged new "international guidelines that advocate for influenza immunization in those at high risk of a heart attack." He has also encouraged those people who are at a risk of heart attacks to take necessary precautions against the flu and other respiratory infections by simply ensuring cleanliness, such as washing their hands and having themselves immunized.
The medical field had long suspected the correlation between the flu and heart attack, but could not establish the connection until Kwong and his research team confirmed it in their study.
