THE 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine is associated with a lower risk of COVID-19-associated major adverse cardiovascular events, according to a new large-scale study.1
COVID-19 and Cardiovascular Risk
SARS-CoV-2 infection is linked to heightened risk of major adverse cardiovascular events, with a body of research documenting substantial increases in, for example, myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, heart failure, and cardiovascular death.2,3
Vaccine Administration
The target-trial emulation analysed the electronic health records of more than 1 million US veterans.1
Participants had vaccines between 3rd September and 31st December 2024.
Researchers compared same-day co-administration of the 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine against those who received the influenza vaccine alone.
Among participants, around 350,000 received the COVID-19 vaccine and approximately 690,500 did not.
Lower Risk of Major Adverse Cardiovascular Events
At eight months, the COVID-19 vaccine was associated with an approximately 37.7% lower risk of major adverse cardiovascular events.
This was statistically significant only in people older 75 years, who also experienced the largest absolute risk reduction, with 5.5 fewer events per 10,000 people.
No significant vaccine effectiveness was seen in those younger than 65 or aged between 65 and 75 years.
The benefit was consistently substantially greater for people with a comorbid health condition.
Nonetheless, vaccine effectiveness was significant across subgroups without comorbidities.
Broader Protection
Analysis of all-cause major adverse cardiovascular events, all-cause hospitalisation, and all-cause death pointed to larger reductions in risk, at approximately 24 fewer events, 30 fewer hospitalisations, and 16 fewer deaths per 10,000 people.
Researchers reported that this broader protection likely points to the hidden burden of undetected SARS-CoV-2 and complications that may subsequently arise, which can be mitigated by COVID-19 vaccination.
References
1 Cai M, Xie Y, Al-Aly Z. 2024-2025 COVID-19 vaccine and major adverse cardiovascular events among US veterans. JAMA Intern Med. 2026;DOI:10.1001/jamainternmed.2026.1929.
2 Xie Y et al. Long-term cardiovascular outcomes of COVID-19. Nat Med. 2022;28(3):583–590.
3 Knight R et al. CVD-COVID-UK/COVID-IMPACT Consortium and the Longitudinal Health and Wellbeing COVID-19 National Core Study. Association of COVID-19 with major arterial and venous thrombotic diseases: a population-wide cohort study of 48 million adults in England and Wales. Circulation. 2022;146(12):892–906.
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