A growing number of young people are suffering from the inflammation of the heart known as myocarditis.
In fact, this is becoming so much the case that one hospital is currently running an advertisement warning about myocarditis in children.
The advertisement, published by NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on Sept. 6, follows a little girl talking about how she overcame her heart problems.
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“One day, I had a stomach ache so bad I didn’t want to do anything,” the girl said in the commercial.
“The team at NewYork-Presbyterian said it was actually my heart. It was severely swollen, something called myocarditis.
“But doctors gave me medicine, then used machines to control my heartbeat. They saved me.”
It also appears that there are a growing number of heart problems occurring in younger adults.
According to Ohio’s University Hospitals Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute, the number of heart attacks occurring in those under the age of 40 is increasing.
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Many of the conditions contributing to this problem are “controllable,” according to University Hospitals.
Those conditions include diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure, obesity and smoking.
According to at least one study reported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the COVID-19 pandemic may be contributing to increased rates of myocarditis in young people.
The study, originally published by the Center for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, found that a survey of 900 hospitals around the country “found inpatient visits for myocarditis were 42% higher in 2020 compared to 2019,” the American Academy of Pediatrics reported.
The main difference between those two years was the presence of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“About 42% of patients with myocarditis had a history of COVID-19, mostly within the same month. The team determined the risk of myocarditis to be 0.146% among those with COVID-19 and 0.009% among those not diagnosed with COVID-19,” the academy reported.
While the average age for infection was 54 years, the study found that myocarditis was 16 times more prevalent for those who had been infected with COVID-19 and 37 times higher for children under the age of 16 who had been infected with the disease.
The American Academy of Pediatrics report stressed that the study itself does not prove that COVID-19 causes myocarditis, but the findings indicate a link between the two.
According to the CDC, myocarditis is an extremely rare side effect of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines.
The agency notes that such cases have “rarely been reported,” but when they are, they tend to be in “adolescents and young adult males.”
The CDC maintains that the risks associated with COVID-19 infection currently outweigh the known risks of vaccination, including instances of myocarditis.
