At the beginning of the pandemic, the research team resolved to identify and address important knowledge gaps around COVID-19, study senior author Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, told JAMA in an email. “At that time, none of us knew anything about long COVID,” noted Al-Aly, who is chief of research and development at the VA St Louis Health Care System and a clinical epidemiologist at Washington University in St Louis. “Over several weeks, we started hearing about patients who were not fully recovering and had lingering issues including heart problems.” These patients—who call themselves long haulers—inspired the team to study long COVID, also known as post-COVID conditions.

In a report published in Nature last April, the researchers demonstrated that people with long COVID can have sequelae in several organ systems, including cardiovascular disorders. With the current study, they set out to gain a deeper understanding of COVID-19’s long-term cardiovascular consequences.