A sharp drop in heart attacks in Finland last year seems to be a result of the COVID pandemic, doctors believe.
Cardiologist Mika Laine noticed a roughly 30 per cent reduction in the number of patients suffering myocardial infarction at Helsinki University Central Hospital in April and May 2020. But what was even more surprising was that this was not an isolated occurrence.
“When we started to study this further, we noticed that exactly the same phenomenon happened everywhere else in Finland and also in other countries in Europe and in the United States. So it was a kind of global phenomenon that happened during the COVID pandemic,” he told Euronews.
What was behind the drop?
Dr Laine is of the opinion that the fall in heart attack patient numbers results from changes made in response to the COVID outbreak.
“We have the exact same genes that we had a year ago, two years ago. So it has to be something in the environment that has changed,” he said. One major factor could be the massive global shift to remote working for many people, as a result of the lockdowns.
“People are at home, they are less stressed because they don’t need to go through morning traffic, hurry to work and so forth,” Dr Laine added.
EU Science Hub data shows that even before the pandemic, Finns worked remotely more than almost any other EU country. Last May, EU labour research body Eurofound revealed that Finnish workers made the fastest switch to teleworking in the EU, with nearly 60 per cent switching over.
“We also see this decrease in those people who are retired, who don’t go to work, so it cannot be just because you’re commuting,” said Dr Laine.
He however cautioned that there could be other factors behind the fall in heart attack patients.
Was there a real fall in heart attacks in 2020?
“We know that many people stopped smoking because smoking was associated with severe COVID mortality,” he said.
Better air quality in urban areas as a result of the lockdown could be another cause, Laine said, since airborne particles are known to be a risk factor for heart disease.
However not all are convinced that the pandemic had a positive impact on patients with all types of heart conditions.
Research published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in January found that, during the early phase of the pandemic, deaths due to ischaemic heart disease and hypertensive diseases increased in some parts of the US. Some patients may have died as a result of avoiding hospital visits due to infection fears, the researchers noted.
A temporary or permanent effect?
With Finland, however,Dr Laine believes that was not the case.
“We haven’t seen any increase in mortality in cardiac diseases and so currently we think that it’s a true decrease in the number of cases and not because patients are not seeking help,” he said. “People were not dying at home to myocardial infarction”.
According to Dr Laine, the number of heart attack patients in Finland remains about 5 per cent lower than average, despite the easing of COVID restrictions.
“I think this is a typical example that environmental factors can have profound effects on myocardial infarction. And I think it’s motivating us to change our lifestyle healthier,” Dr Laine said.
Source: EuroNews
