New research produced by British scholars has claimed that vaccination with any Covid-19 shot lowers the incidence of heart attacks and strokes and therefore outweighs the risks of adverse effects.
Researchers from the universities of Cambridge, Bristol and Edinburgh were able to analyze millions of anonymized health records of adults in England, provided by the National Health Service (NHS) and dated from December 2020 to January 2022. By that point, over 90% of the UK population over the age of 12 had received at least one dose of the jab.
“We studied [Covid]-19 vaccines and cardiovascular disease in 45.7 million adults in England and found a similar or lower incidence of common cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attacks and strokes, following each vaccination than before or without vaccination,” said Dr. Samatha Ip of Cambridge, the lead author of the study.
Ip and 16 other researchers based their conclusions on the linked data from general practices, hospital admissions and death records, in a secure environment provided by the NHS. They were looking at the incidence of cardiovascular events before or without vaccination compared to after.
According to their findings, published this week in the journal Nature Communications, the incidence of heart attacks and strokes dropped by almost 10% in the 13-24 weeks after the first dose of the jab. This went to 27% lower after the second dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and 20% lower after the second Pfizer shot.
“This England-wide study offers patients reassurance of the cardiovascular safety of first, second and booster doses of [Covid]-19 vaccines,” said William Whiteley, associate director at the BHF Data Science Centre and professor at the University of Edinburgh.
The benefits of second and booster doses, added Whiteley, “outweigh the very rare cardiovascular complications.”
Previous studies have found a rise in myocarditis and pericarditis after the mRNA-based shots – such as those from Pfizer/BioNtech and Moderna – and vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia (blood clotting) following adenovirus-based vaccines such as the AstraZeneca one.
While this study confirmed those findings, it did not identify any new cardiovascular conditions and “offers further reassurance that the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risk,” the authors said.
The vaccination program, said Ip, “has been shown to provide protection against severe [Covid]-19 and saved millions of lives worldwide.”
The study used a technique called Cox regression to estimate adjusted hazard ratios and corresponding 95% confidence intervals in time intervals since vaccination, adjusted for a wide range of comorbidities, age, sex, and prior Covid-19 infections.
Critics of the vaccination mandates embraced by many countries – including the UK – have argued that the shots had not been tested for safety, failed to prevent transmission of the virus, and potentially pose greater risks to otherwise healthy people than the virus itself.