Covid-19 could have indirectly increased the number of deaths from cardiovascular or nutritional diseases

At the beginning of the 2020s, France observed an increase in deaths from cardiovascular diseases or of nutritional origin, according to a study published Tuesday, December 18, a change in trend which remains to be explained but could be linked to the Covid health crisis -19.

“We note increases in mortality due to diseases of the circulatory system in 2021, to endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases and of the digestive system from 2020, compared to the trends for the years 2015-2019,” summarizes this study by reference carried out by researchers from the Public Health France agency, Inserm and the statistics department of the Ministry of Health (Drees).

Every year, these researchers take stock of the main causes of mortality in France with a little delay: this is the year 2021, marked, like the previous one, by numerous deaths from Covid despite the first positive effects of vaccination. Thus, although the total number of deaths - 660,168 - declined slightly compared to 2020, the year Covid appeared, it remained significantly higher than before the pandemic.

Covid itself remained the third cause of death in France in 2021, as in 2020. It caused around a tenth of deaths, compared to a quarter for cancer and a fifth for cardiovascular diseases. If the weight of Covid has since probably fallen among the major causes of mortality, other trends observed by the study could prove more lasting.

Thus, deaths from cardiovascular diseases interrupted their downward trend in 2021. We also observed an increase in deaths linked to metabolic or nutritional diseases, such as diabetes or cirrhosis, a rebound already perceptible in 2020. “We have some hypotheses for these increases which could be linked to indirect effects of the epidemic of Covid,” one of the authors, Anne Fouillet, epidemiologist at Public Health France, told AFP.

“We can think of difficulties in accessing care as well as greater social isolation which may have influenced differences in behavior and consumption,” she detailed, specifying that these trends were also observed in other countries. But “all these remain hypotheses and require additional studies,” she added.