New studies from the United States and Poland detail COVID-19’s cardiovascular toll, with one suggesting that infected children face significantly higher odds of conditions such as high blood pressure and heart failure and the other revealing that post-infection heart symptoms are common in adults.

Even kids at low risk had higher rates of heart conditions A University of Pennsylvania–led research team used electronic health records from 19 US children’s hospitals participating in the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) consortium to estimate the risk of cardiovascular disease 1 to 6 months after COVID-19 infection from March 2020 to September 2023, with at least 6 months of follow-up.

Of the more than 1.2 million participants aged 0 to 20 years, 297,920 (24.6%; 13,646 with congenital heart defects [CHDs]) had COVID-19, and 915,402 (75.4%; 46,962 with CHDs) were uninfected controls. The average patient age was 7.8 years, and 51.4% were male.

The findings were published today in Nature Communications.>