The vaccines that decrease risk of heart attack and stroke

New research has found these extremely common infections are linked to potentially deadly heart attacks and strokes. But this is the very simple thing you can do to prevent them.

Viruses that cause common infections such as Covid, RSV or the flu can also trigger heart attacks and strokes, new research warns.

A team from the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Research Children’s Institute (MCRI) found the viral respiratory infections were linked to an increased risk of the potentially deadly heart events.

Senior author Jim Buttery is head of the Epidemiology Informatics Research Group at MCRI and Professor of Child Health Informatics at the University of Melbourne.

He said it was likely it was the inflammation that occurs around the time of these viral infections that temporarily increased the risk of clots developing in the blood vessels supplying the heart or brain.

The researchers say the risk is short-term, but the message is that vaccines decrease risk of heart attack and stroke.

“The risks are short-term, but the message is that vaccines can decrease the risk,” Professor Buttery said.

“We know the influenza vaccine decreases the risk of having a heart attack or stroke, now there’s increasingly good evidence that new vaccines like Covid may also decrease your risk of having stroke.”

He said the research was important because while there was world-class cardiovascular research done in Australia, and the causes of the disease well known and varied, the team wanted to understand if common respiratory infections were also a trigger for a heart attack.

“The answer is yes,” Professor Buttery said.

The team screened more than 11,000 articles and looked in detail at 48 international studies and published their results on Wednesday in the journal Cardiovascular Research.

“What the studies show is that there’s good evidence that influenza causes heart attacks and strokes, and that other viruses are likely to play a role in particular in stroke, but also possibly in triggering heart attacks,” Professor Buttery said.

The study is the first to focus on viruses other than influenza being a trigger for heart attacks and strokes. Picture: iStock

The risk, he said, was across the adult population.

“Because so many of these viruses have already or are soon to be vaccine preventable, it becomes really important to understand if they can also help protect the population in ways other than just protecting against the infection,” he said.

Lead author PhD candidate Tu Nguyen said this was the first study to focus on viruses other than influenza being a trigger for heart attacks and strokes.

“This study provides a better picture of the role of other respiratory viruses,” she said.

“We focused specifically on laboratory-confirmed infections and found that common respiratory viruses play a role in precipitating acute cardiovascular events, but how strong the link is varies between viruses.

The researchers say many of these viruses have already or are soon to be vaccine preventable.

“Older adults are more vulnerable to serious events like heart attacks or strokes that can arise from these infections so that’s why studying this relationship helps us understand these risks at the community level, and may encourage older Australians to get immunised where they can as many are vaccine preventable.”

Professor Buttery said there was not a lot of data specific to Australia and that the team’s future research would look to fill this gap.

The team, alongside collaborators in Western Australia and Queensland, will now map the distribution of common infections for Australians using a platform called SnotWatch.

“We will now use real-world state wide data from all three states to understand these risks better and help inform vaccine and treatment decisions,” Professor Buttery said.

Originally published as The vaccines that decrease risk of heart attack and stroke