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Did heart health impact the risk of severe COVID-19 infection during the pandemic?
Adults with better Life’s Essential 8 scores had lower odds of becoming severely ill or dying from COVID-19, a new Journal of the American Heart Association study finds.
BURLINGTON, VT May 26, 2026 — Better heart health before the pandemic was linked to a lower risk of severe COVID-19 events, according to research published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association , an open-access, peer-reviewed journal of the American Heart Association.
Adults with highest heart health scores at the beginning of the pandemic were nearly half as likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19 when compared to those with the lowest scores.
People with cardiovascular disease are known to be at a greater risk for severe COVID-19 infection, defined in this study as hospitalization or death. What wasn’t known was how heart health related to severe COVID-19 among adults without cardiovascular disease.
“COVID-19 caused 1.22 million deaths in the U.S. between March 2020 and March 2025, so it’s essential that we understand how important health components, such as heart health, relate to severity of COVID-19 infections,” said lead study author Tim Plante, M.D., M.H.S., an associate professor of medicine at the Robert Larner, M.D. College of Medicine at the University of Vermont and an internal medicine physician with University of Vermont Health, both in Burlington, Vermont. “Our findings suggest that the tremendous impact of COVID-19 on the U.S. could have been reduced if the general population had had better heart health prior to the onset of the pandemic.
Researchers determined the heart health of nearly 30,000 people using the American Heart Association’s Life's Essential 8 metric, which considers diet, physical activity, smoking, sleep, body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar. This study may be the first to leverage the Life’s Essential 8 metrics to examine the relationships among heart health, the risk of severe COVID-19 infection, and other factors.
The analysis found:
“The findings suggest that having a healthy heart helps the body deal with the stress of a viral infection like COVID-19,” according to senior study author Elizabeth C. Oelsner, M.D., Dr.P.H., Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City.
“In many ways, a viral infection is like a cardiac stress test, except it’s not controlled. At the beginning of the pandemic, we immediately saw that COVID-19 was a particularly severe stress on the body. Our results highlight that better heart health, which is something that individuals can work on, likely prepares you better for real-life stress tests such as infectious diseases like COVID-19,” said Oelsner.
While more research is needed, the study adds to the growing evidence that better heart health “is important not just to protect people from heart disease but for protection from adverse outcomes from infections such as COVID-19 and for overall health,” said Sadiya S. Khan, M.D., M.Sc., FAHA, chair of the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology Statistic Committee, who was not involved in this research.
“Healthy lifestyle habits make a difference for preventing heart disease, which can sometimes feel like a vague and far-off goal for people, and also for more direct health benefits such as preventing adverse outcomes from respiratory infections,” said Khan, who is the Magerstadt Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology and an associate professor of cardiology and preventive medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.
Khan notes that the study also emphasizes the importance of vaccination to prevent complications, particularly in those who are older, with low heart health or a diagnosis of heart disease.
Study details, background, design and limitations:
Co-authors, disclosures and funding sources are listed in the manuscript.
Studies published in the American Heart Association’s scientific journals are peer-reviewed. The statements and conclusions in each manuscript are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect the Association’s policy or position. The Association makes no representation or guarantee as to their accuracy or reliability. The Association receives more than 85% of its revenue from sources other than corporations. These sources include contributions from individuals, foundations and estates, as well as investment earnings and revenue from the sale of our educational materials. Corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations to the Association. The Association has strict policies to prevent any donations from influencing its science content and policy positions. Overall financial information is available here .
Additional Resources:
Journal of the American Heart Association
Meta-analysis
People
Life’s Essential 8 and risk of severe Covid-19 among adults without clinical cardiovascular disease: The Collaborative Cohort of Cohorts for Covid-19 Research (C4R) Study
27-May-2026
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