Abstract We0034: Long COVID is Associated with Higher Incidences of Adverse Cardiovascular but not Renal Outcomes: A Global Retrospective Study

Although most people with COVID-19 recover within weeks of illness, up to 20% continue to experience post-COVID conditions (long COVID), months to years after infection, which may pose substantial risk for long-term cardiovascular burden. However, there is a lack of comprehensive studies examining the risks for cardiovascular and renal outcomes due to long COVID. We hypothesized that individuals with long COVID exhibit increased risks for adverse cardiovascular and renal outcomes than those who were diagnosed with COVID-19 but did not develop long COVID. We performed a retrospective analysis using TriNetX, which is an online database that includes EMR data from over 250 million patients across 94 healthcare organizations around the world. We analyzed nine outcomes: heart failure (HF), ischemic heart disease (IHD), essential hypertension (HTN), deep vein thrombosis (DVT), pulmonary embolism (PE), myocardial infarction (MI), cerebral infarction (stroke), acute kidney injury (AKI), and chronic kidney disease (CKD). We matched patients who developed long COVID 1:1 by age and sex to COVID-19 patients who did not develop long COVID. We identified 51,811 individuals in each group, and for each outcome analysis, we excluded patients with risk factors for the development of our outcomes of interest. Patients with outcomes prior to or within two months of diagnosis of COVID-19 were excluded as well. In patients with long COVID, we found an increased prevalence of cardiovascular outcomes such as DVT, PE, stroke, HF, IHD, and HTN ( p < 0.0001 for all except for CI, p = 0.032). However, the incidence for MI was not significantly associated with long COVID ( p = 0.154). Furthermore, the prevalence of renal outcomes such as AKI and CKD were also not significantly associated with long COVID ( p = 0.7153 for AKI, and p = 0.0895 CKD). In conclusion, these findings suggest an overall increased incidence of cardiovascular outcomes in patients with long COVID, highlighting the need for further prospective studies.