Covid-19 Could Increase Risk Of Autoimmune Disease, Finds A New Study

The risk of being persistently ill even after you recover from Covid-19 cannot be neglected. While many people are experiencing several post-Covid symptoms, including weakness and fatigue, a new study indicates that the risk of acquiring autoimmune diseases is significantly higher among those who have recovered from the SARS-CoV-2 infection.

A recent study, published in the free medical archive of unprinted studies, medRxiv, hints at a connection between the Covid-19 virus and autoimmune diseases. Researchers investigated how the infection may increase the chance of acquiring any of 30 autoimmune disorders by analysing the health records of 640,000 people in Germany who contracted COVID-19 in 2020 and 1.5 million people who were not infected by the virus.

The researchers discovered that more than 15% of persons who had contracted COVID-19 experienced the first onset of an autoimmune disease, as opposed to around 11% of those who had not. Common after-effects of Covid-19 were psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, and thyroid issues, among others.

“SARS-CoV-2 infection is associated with an increased risk of developing new-onset autoimmune diseases after the acute phase of infection,” the researchers concluded.

“We found a 42.63% higher likelihood of acquiring autoimmunity for patients who had suffered from COVID-19. This estimate was similar for common autoimmune diseases, such as Hashimoto thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, or Sjögren syndrome. The highest incidence rate ratio (IRR) was observed for an autoimmune disease of the vasculitis group. Patients with a more severe course of Covid-19 were at a greater risk for incident autoimmune diseases,” said the researchers.

The study was supported by a grant from the German Federal Ministry of Health.

What are autoimmune diseases?

Normally, our immune system protects against viruses and germs. It has its own mechanism to attack these foreign invaders in our bodies as soon as it detects them. Our immune system can typically distinguish between our body cells and foreign cells that can cause us harm. A person is said to develop an autoimmune disease when their immune system fails to identify these harmful cells or treats the healthy body cells as alien. Instead of destroying the harmful cells, the immune system acts against the body’s cells. Some common examples of autoimmune diseases are type-1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, and autoimmune vasculitis.

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