COVID-19 infection linked with higher death rate in acute heart failure patients
2021-01-07
(Press-News.org) Sophia Antipolis, 7 January 2021: Patients with acute heart failure nearly double their risk of dying if they get COVID-19, according to research published today in ESC Heart Failure, a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC).1 The small, single centre study highlights the need for patients with heart failure to take extra precautions to avoid catching COVID-19.
"Our results support prioritising heart failure patients for COVID-19 vaccination once it is available," said study lead investigator Dr. Amardeep Dastidar, a consultant interventional cardiologist at North Bristol NHS Trust and Bristol Heart Institute, UK. "In the meantime, heart failure patients of all ages should be considered a high-risk group and be advised to maintain social distance and wear a face mask to prevent infection."
Heart failure refers to progressive weakening of the heart's pump function with symptoms of breathlessness, ankle swelling and fatigue. Sudden and severe worsening of symptoms is called acute heart failure - this is a medical emergency and requires admission to hospital for intravenous medication and intensive monitoring.
This study examined referral rates for acute heart failure during the pandemic and 30-day mortality. The analysis included 283 patients with acute heart failure admitted to the cardiology department of North Bristol NHS Trust. Two-thirds of the patients had chronic heart failure and presented with an acute deterioration. The date of the first UK coronavirus death, 2 March 2020, was the cut-off to define two groups: before-COVID (7 January to 2 March; eight weeks) and after-COVID (3 March to 27 April; eight weeks; i.e. during the pandemic).
There was a substantial, but statistically non-significant, drop in admissions for acute heart failure during the pandemic. A total of 164 patients were admitted in the eight weeks before-COVID compared to 119 patients after-COVID - a 27% reduction (p=0.06).
"This finding may reflect public concerns about social distancing at the start of the national lockdown, delayed reporting of symptoms, and anxiety regarding hospital attendance," said Dr. Dastidar. "In support of these explanations, our data demonstrate an increase in referrals during the later weeks of lockdown in line with UK media reports encouraging patients to seek medical attention if needed."
The 30-day mortality rate of patients with acute heart failure nearly doubled during the pandemic. Some 11% of patients in the before-COVID group died within 30 days compared to 21% of the after-COVID group - a relative risk of 1.9 (95% confidence interval 1.09-3.3).
The researchers examined what factors may have been responsible for the higher death rate during the pandemic. Older age and admission during the pandemic were linked with death after adjusting for other factors that could influence the relationship, with hazard ratios of 1.04 and 2.1, respectively. When patients with a positive COVID test were removed from the analysis, there was no difference in mortality between the before- and after-COVID groups - indicating that patients with both acute heart failure and COVID-19 had a poorer prognosis.
"This may suggest a direct interaction or susceptibility to worse outcomes for acute heart failure patients with superimposed COVID infection," said Dr. Dastidar. "It is noteworthy that our region had very low rates of COVID infection during the study and yet a connection with higher mortality was still apparent."
Dr. Dastidar pointed out that routine testing for COVID-19 infection was not in place at the time of the study. He said: "It would be informative to review more recent admissions when COVID testing was more widely implemented to further support our findings. As this was a single centre study, it would be valuable to confirm the findings in a countrywide analysis. Additionally, we are keen to review longer term data to look for patterns of prognosis at later stages in this patient population."
INFORMATION:
Authors: ESC Press Office
Tel: +33 (0)4 89 87 20 85
Mobile: +33 (0)7 8531 2036
Email: press@escardio.org
Follow us on Twitter @ESCardioNews
Funding: The study was performed as part of the heart failure service evaluation project and no external funding was obtained.
Disclosures: None.
Notes
References
1Doolub G, Wong C, Hewitson L, et al. Impact of COVID-19 on inpatient referral of acute heart failure: a single-centre experience from the south-west of the UK. ESC Heart Fail. 2021. doi:10.1002/ehf2.13158.
To find out more about heart failure, visit the END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-01-07
Modelling study suggests that pregnant women in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, who are exposed to poor air quality, may be at higher risk of stillbirths and miscarriages.
An estimated 349,681 pregnancy losses per year in south Asia were associated with exposure to PM2.5 concentrations that exceeded India's air quality standard (more than 40 μg/m³), accounting for 7% of annual pregnancy loss in the region from 2000-2016.
First study to estimate the effect of air pollution on pregnancy loss across the region indicates that air pollution could be a major contributor to pregnancy loss in south Asia, so controlling air pollution is vital for improving maternal ...
2021-01-07
WHO H. Gilbert Welch MD, MPH, Senior Investigator, Center for Surgery and Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital; co-author of a new Sounding Board article published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
WHAT Melanoma of the skin is now the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in the U.S. Diagnoses of melanoma are six times as high today as they were 40 years ago. While incidence of melanoma has been rising steeply, melanoma mortality has been generally stable. In a Sounding Board article, Welch and colleagues present evidence for why they believe that increased diagnostic scrutiny is the primary driver of the rapid rise in melanoma diagnoses.
"Melanoma is now the posterchild for overdiagnosis," said Welch. "Although the conventional response has been ...
2021-01-06
DURHAM, N.C. -- Before the pandemic, one-third of U.S. households with children were already "net worth poor," lacking enough financial resources to sustain their families for three months at a poverty level, finds new research from Duke University.
In 2019, 57 percent of Black families and 50 percent of Latino families with children were poor in terms of net worth. By comparison, the rate for white families was 24 percent.
"These 'net worth poor' households have no assets to withstand a sudden economic loss, like we have seen with COVID-19," said Christina Gibson-Davis, co-author of the study and professor of public policy and sociology at Duke University's Center for Child and Family Policy. "Their savings are virtually nil, ...
2021-01-06
The exponential growth of data traffic in our digital age poses some real challenges on processing power. And with the advent of machine learning and AI in, for example, self-driving vehicles and speech recognition, the upward trend is set to continue. All this places a heavy burden on the ability of current computer processors to keep up with demand.
Now, an international team of scientists has turned to light to tackle the problem. The researchers developed a new approach and architecture that combines processing and data storage onto a single chip by using light-based, or "photonic" processors, which ...
2021-01-06
A study led by University of Ottawa researchers provides empirical evidence that mindfulness has a significant impact on the brain of women suffering from neuropathic pain related to breast cancer treatment. The researchers showed that mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) helps modulate neuropathic pain.
Their findings could make a difference in the lives of many women. In Canada, over a quarter of a million women are expected to be diagnosed with breast cancer - the most diagnosed cancer among women worldwide - in 2020. In addition to the psychological impacts of breast cancer, approximately 20 to 50 percent of survivors report experiencing chronic neuropathic pain following treatment.
We talked to senior author Dr. Andra Smith, Full Professor at the uOttawa School of Psychology, ...
2021-01-06
Physicians have long known that necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a potentially lethal inflammatory condition that destroys a premature infant's intestinal lining, is often connected to the development of severe brain injury in those infants who survive. However, the means by which the diseased intestine "communicates" its devastation to the newborn brain has remained largely unknown.
Now, working with mice, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland have identified that missing link -- an immune system cell that they say travels from the gut to the ...
2021-01-06
Indianapolis, Ind. - A team of researchers led by the Indiana Biosciences Research Institute Diabetes Center's Scientific Director Decio L. Eizirik, MD, PhD, has found that identifying new treatments for autoimmune diseases requires studying together the immune system AND target tissues. This study, "Gene expression signatures of target tissues in type 1 diabetes, lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis," is featured in the Jan. 6, 2021, edition of Science Advances.
"We must move away from the present "immune-centric-only" view of autoimmune diseases," explains Eizirik. "Indeed, trying to understand these diseases focusing on the immune system only, ...
2021-01-06
Researchers at Rush University Medical Center have found that opioid use might increase a person's risk of developing pancreatic cancer.
Published Jan. 6, the study, titled "Opioid Use as a Potential Risk Factor for Pancreatic Cancer in the United States," is the first in the country to show evidence that opioid use may be an unidentified risk factor contributing to the increasing incidence of pancreatic cancer.
In fact, opioid misuse and overdose have evolved into a public health crisis. Approximately 70,000 drug overdose deaths were reported in 2017, 68% of which involved an opioid.¹ The use of prescription opioids for the management of chronic pain ...
2021-01-06
DURHAM, N.C. -- Before the pandemic, one-third of U.S. households with children were already "net worth poor," lacking enough financial resources to sustain their families for three months at a poverty level, finds new research from Duke University.
In 2019, 57 percent of Black families and 50 percent of Latino families with children were poor in terms of net worth. By comparison, the rate for white families was 24 percent.
"These 'net worth poor' households have no assets to withstand a sudden economic loss, like we have seen with COVID-19," said Christina Gibson-Davis, co-author of the study and professor of public policy and sociology at Duke University's Center for Child and Family Policy. "Their ...
2021-01-06
Related to new research published in the January issue of Science Translational Medicine, Patrick McNutt, PhD, of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine, was part of the research team that demonstrated a new "Trojan horse" approach that produces strong antidotal efficacy in treating lethal botulism in mice, guinea pigs and rhesus macaque monkeys.
Furthermore, in a companion article, an independent team demonstrated that a related drug has robust efficacy in mice.
"This is one of those serendipitous moments in science where two groups, working independently, demonstrate similar results for a long-standing ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] COVID-19 infection linked with higher death rate in acute heart failure patients
