A recent study has found that receiving the Covishield and Covaxin vaccines for Covid-19 does not elevate the risk of heart attacks, providing crucial insights into the safety of these vaccines.
The study, led by medical professionals at GB Pant Hospital in New Delhi, was designed to assess the impact of Covid-19 vaccination on mortality following acute myocardial infarction (AMI), commonly known as a heart attack.
This research comes in response to a rise in heart attack cases observed after the Covid-19 pandemic, with some attributing these cases to vaccinations.
Dr. Mohit D. Gupta, from the Department of Cardiology at the Govind Ballabh Pant Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, stated, “Covid-19 vaccines have shown to decrease all-cause mortality at 30 days and six months following AMI.” He further added, “This study is the first to be conducted among a larger population of AMI patients, which has shown Covid-19 vaccines to be not only safe but also to have a protective effect in terms of reducing all-cause mortality both in the short term as well as at six months of follow-up.”
The study involved a retrospective analysis of 1,578 heart attack patients admitted to GB Pant Hospital between August 2021 and August 2022. Among these patients, 69% had received Covid-19 vaccinations, while the remaining 31% had not been vaccinated.
Within the vaccinated group, 96% had completed both doses of the vaccine, while 4% had received a single dose. Most of those vaccinated (92.3%) had received Covishield, developed by Pune-based Serum Institute of India in collaboration with British pharma company AstraZeneca. The remaining 7.7% had received Covaxin, developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech.
The study revealed that there was no clustering of heart attacks following vaccination. Only 2% of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) cases occurred within the first 30 days of vaccination, with the majority occurring between 90 and 270 days post-vaccination.
Among the 1,578 heart attack patients, 13% experienced a 30-day mortality rate. Of these, 58% belonged to the vaccinated group, while 42% were unvaccinated. However, after adjusting for pre-existing risk factors, the study found that the odds of 30-day mortality were significantly lower in the vaccinated population. The study also identified increasing age, diabetes, and smoking as factors associated with higher odds of 30-day mortality.
During the 30-day to six-month follow-up period, 75 patients passed away, with 43.7% of them being vaccinated. Again, after adjusting for factors, the study found lower odds of mortality among vaccinated individuals.
The researchers acknowledged certain limitations, such as the study being a single-center retrospective analysis, and called for further validation of these findings through larger studies involving different ethnic groups.
Meanwhile, the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) is conducting its own studies to investigate the unusual spike in “sudden deaths,” particularly heart attacks, among young people following the Covid-19 pandemic.
