The Long-term Impact of COVID-19 on Blood Pressure: A Retrospective Cohort Study

design and participants This single-center retrospective cohort study was conducted at an outpatient cardiology clinic in Shiraz, Iran, between February 15, 2020, and December 28, 2022. We evaluated patients with a confirmed diagnosis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection by RNA reverse-transcriptase polymerase-chain-reaction assays from nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal swab specimens according to World Health Organization guidelines (12). Two physicians (PA, MY) reviewed the patients' electronic medical records, including demographics, comorbidities, vital signs, treatments, and outcomes. Ambiguities were resolved by a third author (MM).

The current study included all COVID-19 patients who had at least one documented blood pressure measurement in the three months preceding infection and one documented measurement one to three months following recovery. The following patients were excluded: those under 18, with hospital admission due to COVID-19, who received corticosteroid therapy, those with a history of systemic inflammatory disease, kidney or liver, immunocompromised patients, and those who switched their antihypertensive regimen during the study. Finally, 5,355 eligible patients were investigated . The primary outcome was to assess BP variation following infection (particularly a prolonged rise in BP) among non-hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The secondary outcome was to identify the predictor factors of BP variation.

The present study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences under code IR.SUMS.MED.REC.1401.465 , and the need for informed consent was waived due to the study's retrospective nature and the absence of patient identifiers in the presented data.