January 25, 2018

What you need to know about news headlines claiming flu causes heart attacks

Posted By

Tags

Joy Victory is deputy managing editor of HealthNewsReview.org. She tweets at @thejoyvictory.

what you need to know about flu and heart attack The big news of the day is a Canadian study looking at patterns in hospital data that link the timing of hospitalization for heart attacks and flu infections.

This study zeroed in on the medical records of people who, over a two-year period, had both confirmed diagnoses of heart attacks and flu during that time window.

They found that during the first week following a positive flu test, heart attacks were more common than in any other week of the two-year timeframe that they looked at. Twenty heart attacks occurred in that first week, compared with an average of 3.3 heart attacks for all other weeks (a “six-fold increase”). The timing of those twenty heart attacks suggests that the flu may have played a role, the researchers suggest, and that link is what most news headlines reporting on the study latched onto.

By including the comments from an independent source, STAT News did a good job of explaining why this six-fold risk is newsworthy, but doesn’t translate to the general population. They pointed out that people who are sick enough to see a doctor and get tested for the flu virus are likely different in important ways from people who don’t get so sick from the flu. Results from these people may not generalize to the rest of us.

Many news organizations didn’t provide any counter-balance, and NBC News’s write-up was especially worrisome, because its headline jumped beyond the capabilities of the study to pronounce “flu virus can cause heart attacks.” The study wasn’t designed to show cause and effect; all it could do was find notable patterns in medical charts.

Comments (2)

We Welcome Comments. But please note: We will delete comments left by anyone who doesn’t leave an actual first and last name and an actual email address.

We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified facts, product pitches, or profanity. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. Comments should primarily discuss the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages about health and medicine. This is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science. Nor is it a forum to share your personal story about a disease or treatment -- your comment must relate to media messages about health care. If your comment doesn't adhere to these policies, we won't post it. Questions? Please see more on our comments policy.

Pam Tarlow, PharmD

January 29, 2018 at 1:14 pm

Did you see the article in the LA Times about this yesterday 1/28/18: Headline: “Flu shot may cut heart attack risk.”

Joy Victory

January 29, 2018 at 4:49 pm

Thanks for alerting us. I can’t find a link–can you share?

COMMENTS button We welcome comments, which users can leave at the end of any of our systematic story reviews or at the end of any of our blog posts.

But before leaving a comment, please review these notes about our policy.

You are responsible for any comments you leave on this site.

This site is primarily a forum for discussion about the quality (or lack thereof) in journalism or other media messages (advertising, marketing, public relations, medical journals, etc.) It is not intended to be a forum for definitive discussions about medicine or science.

We will delete comments that include personal attacks, unfounded allegations, unverified claims, product pitches, profanity or any from anyone who does not list a full name and a functioning email address. We will also end any thread of repetitive comments. We don”t give medical advice so we won”t respond to questions asking for it.

We don”t have sufficient staffing to contact each commenter who left such a message. If you have a question about why your comment was edited or removed, you can email us at feedback@healthnewsreview.org.

There has been a recent burst of attention to troubles with many comments left on science and science news/communication websites. Read “Online science comments: trolls, trash and treasure.”

The authors of the Retraction Watch comments policy urge commenters:

“Shed light, not just heat. Facts, challenges, disagreements, corrections — those are all fine. Attacking the person, instead of the idea or the interpretation, is neither acceptable nor helpful.”

We”re also concerned about anonymous comments. We ask that all commenters leave their full name and provide an actual email address in case we feel we need to contact them. We may delete any comment left by someone who does not leave their name and a legitimate email address.

And, as noted, product pitches of any sort – pushing treatments, tests, products, procedures, physicians, medical centers, books, websites – are likely to be deleted. We don”t accept advertising on this site and are not going to give it away free.

The ability to leave comments expires after a certain period of time. So you may find that you’re unable to leave a comment on an article that is more than a few months old.