A new study has found that the risk of myocarditis increases sevenfold with COVID-19 infection compared to the protective vaccine against the disease. Patients with myocarditis may experience chest pain, shortness of breath, or irregular heartbeat when the inflammation is severe, which can cause heart failure and even death. The study, conducted by the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and published on August 29 in the journal Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine, evaluated and analyzed 22 global studies on COVID-19 published between December 2019 and May 2022. The studies included nearly 58 million patients suffering from cardiac complications belonging to one of two groups: the first includes 2.5 million who were infected with the virus compared to those who were not infected, and 55.5 million who received the COVID-19 vaccination compared to those who did not. Navya Folleti, co-author of the study, said in a statement: "The results we reached show that the risk of myocarditis from COVID-19 infection is much greater than the risk from the vaccine, and moving forward, it will be important to monitor potential long-term effects in those with myocarditis." Also, researchers compared patients with COVID-19, vaccinated and unvaccinated, with those without the virus regardless of vaccination status, where they found that COVID-19 patients are at 15 times higher risk of myocarditis compared to uninfected individuals. Then the researchers compared myocarditis rates among those who received vaccinations and those without protection, and the results showed that myocarditis rates among those who received the COVID-19 vaccine were only twice as high as those of uninfected individuals. Based on these results, the researchers concluded that the risk of myocarditis associated with COVID-19 was seven times higher than the risks associated with vaccinations. The researchers also found that the majority of people (61 percent) diagnosed with myocarditis after vaccination or COVID-19 infection were men. In both the vaccine and COVID-19 groups, 1.07 percent of myocarditis patients required hospitalization, and 0.01 percent died.