Toronto (January 25, 2018):The flu doesn’t just make you feel lousy. A study published Wednesday finds it can increase your risk of having a heart attack, too.
“We found that you’re six times more likely to have a heart attack during the week after being diagnosed with influenza, compared to the year before or after the infection,” says study.
Author Dr.Jeff Kwong, an epidemiologist and family physician with the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and Public Health Ontario in Canada.
The results appear in this week’s Doctors noticed long ago that there was a connection between seasonal flu and cardiovascular deaths, but the association has been hard to nail down. Part of the challenge is that many people with flu symptoms don’t get tested for the virus.
So Kwong and his colleagues decided to use test results (from flu tests and other viruses, too) and match them with hospital records.
“This is the first time we’ve had lab-confirmed influenza, so we’re certain that these were influenza [viruses] causing the infection,.
There’s a lot happening in the body during the flu that can help explain the increased risk of a heart attack.
“There’s inflammation going on, and your body is under a lot of stress,” explains Kwong. Oxygen levels and blood pressure can drop. These changes “can lead to an increased risk of forming blood clots in the vessels that serve your heart.”
A young person who is normally healthy is very unlikely to have a heart attack during the flu. “It’s all about your baseline risk.
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