Ian Mannix
Cosmos newsroom
A big Korean analysis of people with heart failure has revealed substantial positive impacts of getting vaccinated against COVID-19.
The study was drawn from the Korean National Health Insurance Service database, which covers nearly all residents of the country.
It contained 651,127 patients aged 18 years or older with heart failure.
The study found heart failure patients who are vaccinated against COVID-19 have an 82% greater likelihood of living longer than those who are not vaccinated; a 47% lower risk of hospitalisation for heart failure and 13% reduced risk of COVID-19 infection, compared with people who were not vaccinated.
The research was presented at Heart Failure 2024, a scientific congress of the European Society of Cardiology, in Lisbon, Portugal.
Heart failure is a life-threatening syndrome affecting more than 64 million people worldwide.
“Patients with heart failure should be vaccinated against COVID-19 to protect their health,” says study author Dr. Kyeong-Hyeon Chun of the Ilsan Hospital, Goyang, in the Republic of Korea. “In this large study of patients with heart failure, COVID-19 vaccination was associated with a lower likelihood of contracting the infection, being admitted to hospital because of heart failure, or dying from any cause during a six-month period compared with remaining unvaccinated.”
Previous studies have shown that COVID-19 outcomes are worse in patients with heart failure compared to those without heart failure.
Covid and increased heart risk
Participants who received two or more doses of COVID-19 vaccine were defined as “vaccinated”, and those who were not vaccinated or had received just one dose were defined as “unvaccinated”.
The average age of people drawn from the data was 69.5 years and 50% were women. Of the total study population, 538,434 (83%) were defined as vaccinated and 112,693 (17%) as unvaccinated.
The researchers performed 1:1 matching of vaccinated and unvaccinated patients according to age, sex, other health conditions (e.g. high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, etc.), income, and region of residence. This resulted in 73,559 vaccinated patients and 73,559 unvaccinated patients for the comparative analyses.
In addition to lower mortality rates, vaccination was associated with significantly lower risks of stroke, heart attack, myocarditis/pericarditis, and venous thromboembolism compared to people who were not vaccinated.
Chun says this is believed to be the first analysis of COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness in a large population of heart failure patients, and the first to show a clear benefit from vaccination for that cohort.
“The study provides strong evidence to support vaccination in patients with heart failure. However, this evidence may not be applicable to all patients with heart failure, and the risks of vaccination should be considered in patients with unstable conditions,” Chun says.
