TOPLINE

Among non-hospitalised adults, those with physician-diagnosed long COVID had a 14% higher risk of developing incident hypertension than those without long COVID, pointing to the need for closer heart health follow‑up and routine blood pressure monitoring in those with lasting post‑COVID complaints.

METHODOLOGY

• Drawing on data from linked Swedish health registries, researchers conducted a longitudinal, population-based cohort study to evaluate whether clinically diagnosed long COVID is linked to incident hypertension among non-hospitalised adults.
• They analysed data of 1,221,570 adults with no prior history of hypertension or hospitalisation for acute COVID between October 2020 and January 2025; of these, 8365 (0.7%) were diagnosed with long COVID. The median age at diagnosis was 46 years, and nearly two thirds were women.
• Long COVID was defined by a physician-assigned diagnostic code.
• The primary endpoint was incident hypertension, defined as the first recorded diagnosis in primary or specialist care.

TAKEAWAY

• Overall, 18% of adults developed incident hypertension; among those with long COVID, 16% of women and 24% of men developed incident hypertension, significantly higher than among women and men without long COVID (P < .0001).
• After adjustment, long COVID was associated with a 14% higher risk for incident hypertension overall (hazard ratio, 1.14; P < .001).
• Long COVID was associated with a 13% and 15% higher risk for incident hypertension in women and men, respectively (P < .005 for both).
• The association between long COVID and incident hypertension was stronger among older adults and differed by diabetes status.

IN PRACTICE

"[The study] findings suggest that SARS-CoV-2 infection may initiate or amplify long-term vascular and autonomic dysregulation, with clinically meaningful consequences for blood-pressure regulation. American and European hypertension guidelines recommend regular blood pressure assessment in all adults at varying intervals, and in this context long COVID may serve as an additional argument for more frequent blood pressure measurements in individuals for whom routine screening would otherwise be less frequent," the researchers wrote.

SOURCE

The study was led by Pia Lindberg, RN, PhD, Karolinska University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden. It was published online on October 10, 2026, in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

LIMITATIONS

The study relied on routinely collected registry data and did not include direct physiologic measurements. Long COVID diagnoses may have been misclassified because identification depended on clinical coding practices and awareness. The analysis could not account for the potential effects of medications on blood pressure.

DISCLOSURES

The study received funding from Region Stockholm and the Swedish Heart Lung Foundation. The authors declared having no relevant conflicts of interest.

This article was created using several editorial tools, including AI, as part of the process. Human editors reviewed this content before publication.