MIAMI: People who get the flu may face a six-fold higher risk of heart attack in the week following infection, said a study Wednesday that bolsters the need for widespread vaccinations against the flu.
The risk of heart attack — or myocardial infarction — is particularly acute in older adults, said the report in the New England of Medicine.
“Our findings are important because an association between influenza and acute myocardial infarction reinforces the importance of vaccination,” said lead author Jeff Kwong, a scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and Public Health Ontario.
The study was based on nearly 20,000 adult cases of laboratory-confirmed influenza infection in Ontario, Canada from 2009 to 2014.
The flu “is a stressor to the system. It can increase inflammation. When you get an infection your heart is beating faster. It can activate platelets, increasing the chance that blood clots will form in the arteries that serve the heart. All of these can increase the chance of having a heart attack,” Dr. Kwong said.
Of those, 332 patients were hospitalized for a heart attack within one year of their flu infection.
The risk appeared highest in the first week, particularly for older people, those with influenza B infections, and patients experiencing their first heart attack.
Other respiratory viruses were also seen to raise the risk of heart attack, though not as much as the flu.
Previous studies have also pointed to a link between the flu and cardiac crises and death.
Kwong urged new “international guidelines that advocate for influenza immunization in those at high risk of a heart attack.”
He also called on people at risk of heart disease to “take precautions to prevent respiratory infections, and especially influenza, through measures including vaccinations and hand washing.”
