New study finds no link between Covid vaccines and heart attacks

New Delhi: A new observational study has revealed that there is no association between the COVID-19 vaccines used in India, Covishield and Covaxin, and the increase in the risk of heart attacks.

The research, published recently in the journal PLOS One, was carried out to determine the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on mortality, following acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or heart attack.

Even though the adverse effects (AEs) of COVID-19 vaccines have mostly been mild, transient, and self-limiting, concerns have been raised regarding the cardiovascular effects.

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 percent) were vaccinated against COVID-19 while 492 (31.2 percent) were unvaccinated. Among the vaccinated group, 1,047 (96 percent) had received two doses of the vaccine while 39 (4 percent) had received only a single dose.

“Our study found that vaccines used in India are safe. There was no association between vaccination in India with heart attack. In fact, the study found that there were fewer chances of death after a heart attack in vaccinated individuals,” Mohit Gupta, who led the study, from G B Pant Hospital said.

Data regarding the patient’s vaccination status including details on the type of vaccine, date of vaccination, and adverse effects were obtained from the enrolled patients.

The researchers found that the analysis did not show a specific clustering of acute myocardial infarction at any particular time post-vaccination, suggesting there was no significant association between COVID-19 jabs and heart attacks.

On 30-day follow-up, all-cause mortality occurred in 201 (12.7 percent) patients with adjusted odds of mortality being significantly lower in the vaccinated group.

Similarly, at six months of follow-up, the vaccinated group had lower odds of mortality as compared to the non-vaccinated group.

According to the study, COVID-19 vaccines showed a decrease in all-cause mortality at 30 days and six months following AMI. However, increasing age, diabetics and smokers had a higher risk of 30-day mortality, the researchers said.

This study is the first to be conducted among a larger population of AMI patients which has shown the COVID-19 vaccine to be not only safe but also have a protective effect in terms of reduction of all-cause mortality both on short term as well as at six months of follow-up, the authors of the study said.

They also noted some limitations, saying that this was a single-centre retrospective study, and the findings need to be validated in larger studies from different ethnic groups.

With inputs from PTI