The World Health Organization declared severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) a pandemic in March 2020. Since then, there have been numerous waves of COVID-19 infection and evolving viral strains. There is accumulating evidence of worse prognoses for people with COVID-19 and existing comorbidities, and a link between acute COVID-19 and new onset cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes mellitus (DM) has been identified. However, it is currently not clear whether COVID-19 has longer-term effects on cardiometabolic risk.

In a recent study published in PLOS Medicine, Dr Rezel-Potts and colleagues aimed to determine whether the incidence of new CVD and DM increased over a 12-month period in people with COVID-19 compared with matched healthy controls in a large UK-based cohort. Clear distinctions on the different stages of COVID-19 infection were defined as: ‘acute COVID-19’ (first 4 weeks after infection), ‘post-acute COVID-19’ (5 to 12 weeks after infection) and ‘long COVID-19’ (symptomatic for more than 12 weeks after infection).