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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22449,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"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}]}}