Association of COVID-19 vaccination with risks of hospitalization due to cardiovascular and other diseases: A study using data from the UK Biobank

Objectives: To explore whether COVID-19 vaccination protects against hospital admission by preventing infections and severe disease. Methods: We leveraged the UK Biobank and studied associations of COVID-19 vaccination (BioNTechBNT162b2 or Oxford-AstraZeneca-ChAdOx1) with hospitalizations from cardiovascular and other selected diseases ( N = 393,544; median follow-up = 54 days among vaccinated individuals). Multivariable Cox, Poisson regression, propensity score matching, and inverse probability treatment weighting analyses were performed. We also performed adjustment using prescription-time distribution matching, and prior event rate ratio. Results: We observed that COVID-19 vaccination (at least one dose), compared with no vaccination, was associated with reduced short-term risks of hospitalizations from stroke (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.178, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.127-0.250, P = 1.50e-23), venous thromboembolism (HR = 0.426, CI: 0.270-0.673, P = 2.51e-4), dementia (HR = 0.114, CI: 0.060-0.216; P = 2.24e-11), non-COVID-19 pneumonia (HR = 0.108, CI: 0.080-0.145; P = 2.20e-49), coronary artery disease (HR = 0.563, CI: 0.416-0.762; P = 2.05e-4), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (HR = 0.212, CI: 0.126-0.357; P = 4.92e-9), type 2 diabetes (HR = 0.216, CI: 0.096-0.486, P = 2.12e-4), heart failure (HR = 0.174, CI: 0.118-0.256, P = 1.34e18), and renal failure (HR = 0.415, CI: 0.255-0.677, P = 4.19e-4), based on standard Cox regression models. Among the previously mentioned results, reduced hospitalizations for stroke, heart failure, non-COVID19 pneumonia, and dementia were consistently observed across regression, propensity score matching/inverse probability treatment weighting, prescription-time distribution matching, and prior event rate ratio. The results for two-dose vaccination were similar. Conclusions: Taken together, this study provides further support to the safety and benefits of COVID-19 vaccination, and such benefits may extend beyond reduction of infection risk or severity per se . However, causal relationship cannot be concluded and further studies are required. (c) 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of International Society for Infectious Diseases. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ )