Enterovirus, a common group of respiratory viruses which are spread person-to-person by normal social contact (and especially deep kissing, since the virus is present in the saliva) may be responsible for triggering 90,000 fatal sudden heart attacks per year in the US.
The enterovirus genus includes: the Coxsackie A viruses, the six nasty Coxsackie B viruses, the 32 human echoviruses, as well as the 3 polioviruses.
A study found that 40% of people who died suddenly of a heart attack had evidence of enterovirus infection in their heart tissues, and in 16%, the specific enterovirus detected was coxsackievirus B.
This study found during a 2-month period at King Edward VII Hospital, UK, 25% of patients admitted with acute heart attack had serological evidence of a very recent coxsackievirus B infection.
Other studies which have linked enterovirus to sudden heart attacks include this one, this one and this one.
Given there are about 225,000 fatal heart attacks per year in the US (see here), if enterovirus is the cause of these heart attacks found in the studies, that would mean enterovirus is killing 90,000 people per year by triggering myocardial infarction, and would mean coxsackievirus B is killing 36,000 people per year.
The general public often think heart attacks happen just at random. But these studies show that acute viral infection of the heart may be the main factor which triggers myocardial infarctions.
You may be perfectly healthy, but then catch an enterovirus infection from someone (perhaps from kissing a new girlfriend or boyfriend), which may begin as a flu-like illness or gastrointestinal upset, and then some days later, as the virus makes its way to your heart, bang!, you're dead from a sudden heart attack.
This sudden death may occur no matter how healthy your lifestyle, because once you get a fierce viral infection in your heart tissues, the heart may struggle to function, and a fatal myocardial infarction may then ensue.
Enterovirus infection is not only just linked to sudden heart attacks in the previously healthy.
Once you catch this virus and it starts living in your body, it may later trigger one of many enterovirus-associated diseases, including: type 1 diabetes (coxsackievirus B can infect and kill the insulin-producing cells), chronic myocarditis, dilated cardiomyopathy (a sequelae of myocarditis), valvular heart disease, myalgic encephalomyelitis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (a motor neuron disease), Parkinson's, Sjögren's syndrome and others (for references, see this article about enterovirus).
