People who get the flu may face a six-fold higher risk of heart attack in the week following infection, said a study on Wednesday that bolsters the need for<\/p>\n
widespread vaccinations against the flu.<\/p>\n
The risk of heart attack\u2014or myocardial infarction\u2014is particularly acute in older adults, said the report in the New England of Medicine.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur findings are important because an association between influenza and acute myocardial infarction reinforces the importance of vaccination,\u201d said lead<\/p>\n
author Jeff Kwong, a scientist at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and Public Health Ontario.<\/p>\n
The study was based on nearly 20,000 adult cases of laboratory-confirmed influenza infection in Ontario, Canada from 2009 to 2014. Of those, 332 patients<\/p>\n
were hospitalized for a heart attack within one year of their flu infection.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
respiratory viruses were also seen to raise the risk of heart attack, though not as much as the flu.<\/p>\n
Previous studies have also pointed to a link between the flu and cardiac crises and death. Kwong urged new \u201cinternational guidelines that advocate for influenza<\/p>\n
immunization in those at high risk of a heart attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also called on people at risk of heart disease to \u201ctake precautions to prevent respiratory infections, and especially influenza, through measures including<\/p>\n
vaccinations and hand washing.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
People who get the flu may face a six-fold higher risk of heart attack in the week following infection, said a study on Wednesday that bolsters the need for widespread vaccinations against the flu. The risk of heart attack\u2014or myocardial infarction\u2014is particularly acute in older adults, said the report in the New England of Medicine. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22449,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22448"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22448\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22450,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22448\/revisions\/22450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}