SARS-CoV-2 infection and long-term risk of cardiovascular and renal morbidity.

Authors

Heather A Boyd, Thor Grønborg Junker, Tor Biering-Sørensen, Jan Wohlfahrt, Anders Hviid

Published in

European heart journal open. Volume 6. Issue 5. Pages oeag121. Epub Jul 31, 2026.

Abstract

Cardiovascular and renal consequences of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection have been studied intensively in high-risk groups, but the consequences of mild infection for the general population, particularly beyond the acute phase of infection, remain unclear. We examined long-term associations between SARS-CoV-2 infection and cardiovascular disease (CVD) and kidney disease (KD) in the general population, with emphasis on age and vaccination status at the time of infection, mild infection, and SARS-CoV-2 variant.
We conducted a register-based cohort study in Denmark that included all Danish residents with ≥1 PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 infection in the period March 2020-December 2022. We defined exposure as a positive PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 infection and used Cox regression to estimate hazard ratios for 15 CVD outcomes and six KD outcomes, comparing persons testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection and persons who only ever tested negative for infection. The cohort for CVD analyses included 4 508 489 persons without pre-existing CVD [median follow-up 25.2 months/person, interquartile range (IQR) 21.7-27.5 months]; 2 698 261 persons (59.8%) tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 infection during the study period. The cohort for the KD analyses included 5 150 480 persons without pre-existing KD (median follow-up 25.1 months, IQR 21.7-27.4 months), 2 983 233 (57.9%) of whom tested positive for infection. SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with slight increases in the risks of pulmonary embolism, venous embolism/thrombosis, arrhythmias, chronic renal failure, unspecified renal failure, and other/unspecified KD up to a year after infection; infection was not associated with the other disease groups tested. The strongest associations between SARS-CoV-2 infection and CVD and KD were observed among unvaccinated persons and persons infected with earlier (pre-omicron) variants.
We found little evidence that infection with SARS-CoV-2 was associated with increased long-term risks of CVD or KD in the general population. Increased CVD risks associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection appeared limited to three outcomes (pulmonary embolism, venous embolism/thrombosis, arrhythmias), and the potential increases in risk were small. Our KD results also suggested that any persistent risks associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection were minimal; however, these findings need to be confirmed in other populations. Most importantly, in a largely vaccinated population, long-term CVD and KD risks differed little for omicron-infected and uninfected persons.

PMID:
42781446
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 25 Sep 2026.

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