Seyyedmohammadsadeq Mirmoeeni
1 
, Amirhossein Azari Jafari
1 , Seyedeh Zohreh Hashemi
2, Elham Angouraj Taghavi
1, Alireza Azani
3,4,5, Haniyeh Ghasrsaz
6, Azadeh Angouraj Taghavi
7, Seyed Hassan Niksima
8, Seyedyasin Rashidi
9, Erfan Kazemi
1, Hossein Sheibani
10* , Seyed Sina Naghibi Irvani
11, Sahar Dalvand
12,13* 1 Student Research Committee, School of Medicine, Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Shahroud, Iran
2 Department of Pharmacology, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
3 Department of Immunology, School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
4 Department of Medical Genetics, Faculty of Medicine, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
5 Department of Biology, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
6 Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Sari, Iran
7 School of Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
8 Preventive Medicine and Public Health Research Center, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
9 Student Research Committee, Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran
10 Clinical Research Developement Unit, Imam Hossein Hospital, Shahroud University of Medical Sciences, Shahroud, Iran
11 Research Institute for Endocrine Science, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
12 Functional Neurosurgery Research Center, Shohada Tajrish Comprehensive Neurosurgical Center of Excellence, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
13 Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Since December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the global population, and one of the major causes of mortality in infected patients is cardiovascular diseases (CVDs).For this systematic review and meta-analysis, we systematically searched Google Scholar, Scopus, PubMed, Web of Science, and Cochrane databases for all articles published by April 2, 2020. Observational studies (cohort and cross-sectional designs) were included in this meta-analysis if they reported at least one of the related cardiovascular symptoms or laboratory findings in COVID-19 patients. Furthermore, we did not use any language, age, diagnostic COVID-19 criteria, and hospitalization criteria restrictions. The following keywords alone or in combination with OR and AND operators were used for searching the literature: “Wuhan coronavirus”, “COVID-19”, “coronavirus disease 2019”, “SARS-CoV-2”, “2019 novel coronavirus” “cardiovascular disease”, “CVD”, “hypertension”, “systolic pressure”, “dyspnea”, “hemoptysis”, and “arrhythmia”. Study characteristics, exposure history, laboratory findings, clinical manifestations, and comorbidities were extracted from the retrieved articles. Sixteen studies were selected which involved 4754 patients, including 2103 female and 2639 male patients. Among clinical cardiac manifestations, chest pain and arrhythmia were found to have the highest incidence proportion. In addition, elevated lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and D-dimer levels were the most common cardiovascular laboratory findings. Finally, hypertension, chronic heart failure, and coronary heart disease were the most frequently reported comorbidities. The findings suggest that COVID-19 can cause various cardiovascular symptoms and laboratory findings. It is also worth noting that cardiovascular comorbidities like hypertension have a notable prevalence among COVID-19 patients.