Covid-19 vaccines didn't raise risk of heart attacks

New Delhi: Vaccination against Covid-19 with Covidshield and Covaxin did not raise any risk of heart attacks, according to a study on Monday.

The study led by doctors at the GB Pant Hospital in the national capital aimed to determine impact of Covid-19 vaccination on mortality following acute myocardial infarction (AMI) or heart attack.

The study comes amid an increase in heart attack cases post Covid-19 pandemic, which has often been linked to the vaccinations.

“Covid-19 vaccines have shown to decrease all-cause mortality at 30 days and six months following AMI,” said Dr. Mohit D. Gupta,Department of Cardiology, Govind Ballabh Pant Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research, in the paper published in the journal PLOS One. “This study is the first to be conducted among a larger population of AMI patients which has shown Covid-19 vaccine to be not only safe but also have a protective effect in terms of reduction of all-cause mortality both on short term as well as at six months of follow-up,” he added.

The team conducted a retrospective analysis of 1,578 heart attack patients admitted to GB Pant between August 2021 and August 2022.

Of the total patients, 69 per cent had been vaccinated, while 31 per cent were unvaccinated.

Among the vaccinated group, 96 per cent had received both doses of the vaccine, while 4 per cent had received only a single dose.

Majority of them 92.3 per cent had been vaccinated with Covishield, developed by Pune-based Serum Institute of India in collaboration with British pharma AstraZeneca, while 7.7 per cent had received Covaxin, developed by Hyderabad-based Bharat Biotech.

The researchers found no clustering of heart attacks occurring after vaccination.

They noted that only 2 per cent of Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) cases occurred within the first 30 days of vaccination.