The COVID-19 pandemic by now has become known for producing some unexpected side effects in the two years that it has been a concern. Now, a new study suggests one of the effects could be a drop in heart attacks among Americans during last year’s lockdown.

On Monday, the American Heart Association (AHA) published the results of a study that examined the relationship between U.S. heart attack deaths, the level of air pollution and COVID-19. What it found was that as individual states underwent lockdowns to curb the virus’ spread, it led to less vehicle traffic, less air pollution and a decrease in heart attacks.

When examining the correlation between the three phenomena, researchers relied on daily air pollution data from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) between Jan. 1, 2019, and April 30, 2020.

Combined with data from the National Emergency Medical Services Information System and the U.S. Census to analyze heart attack frequency during this same period, they found that there were 60,722 heart attacks recorded in this time frame, a 6% drop that translated to roughly 374 fewer heart attacks per 10,000 persons.

Sidney Aung, a fourth-year medical student at the University of California, San Francisco and the lead author of the study, said that the findings demonstrate how a reduction in air pollution has a wide range of benefits for public health and the environment.

“Reducing pollution is not only helpful for the environment, it may also have significant health benefits at the population level such as preventing heart attacks,” said Aung, adding that the study “highlights the importance of reducing air pollution” which, in turn, could “prevent heart attacks."

"We hope that this would provide a greater impetus for increased public health efforts aimed at reducing air pollution," the researcher told United Press International (UPI).

Globally, lockdowns were found to have qualitatively created benefits for the environment as human activity was restricted. Last year, the World Bank confirmed that levels of air pollution went down worldwide, but warned that they could easily spike again if governments sacrificed environmental protections in the name of reviving economic activity.

The results of the latest study also add to the argument put forward by earlier studies that found a correlation between air pollution and the risk of suffering a heart attack. A previous study in 2017 found that pollution contributes to worsening risk factors like enlarging the heart, inflammation and high blood pressure, which could all lead to a stroke.

It was acknowledged that the parameters of his study were limited and that it was primarily observational, meaning it could not directly determine cause and effect. The study also did not examine data related to an individual's age, sex and race, and heart attacks in the survey were not all diagnosed as such by physicians.

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