The never-ending aftereffects of Corona… Increased risk of autoimmune disease

A study is drawing attention as it shows that if you are infected with the coronavirus (COVID-19), the risk of developing autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases increases significantly.

Experts’ opinion is that this suggests the need for long-term monitoring of coronavirus-infected patients as part of the so-called Long Covid aftereffects.

On the 7th local time, the American Medical Association (JAMA) published the results of a large-scale study on the impact of coronavirus infection on autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases (10.1001/jamadermatol.2024.4233).

Although it has been more than a year since the coronavirus pandemic swept the world, research on the virus is still ongoing.

In addition to the immediate clinical symptoms caused by COVID-19, long-term side effects are being reported one after another, making it a global health challenge.

In fact, various long-term follow-up studies are continuing on the effects of coronavirus infection on cardiovascular problems and heart failure, but it is true that there is still insufficient evidence on the effects on autoimmunity.

This is also the reason why domestic researchers, including Dr. Heo Yeon-woo of Yonsei University and Wonju College of Medicine, conducted a large-scale study on this.

Accordingly, the researchers followed up and observed how the coronavirus outbreak affected autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases in a total of 6.91 million people, including 3.14 million patients infected with the coronavirus and 3.76 million control subjects.

The results were surprising. This is because corona infection has been shown to clearly increase the risk of autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases.

In fact, the research results showed that even if all other factors were excluded, the risk of bullous pemphigoid increased by a whopping 1.62 times during coronavirus infection.

Likewise, it was confirmed that the risk of developing Behcet’s disease increased 1.45 times and the risk of developing Crohn’s disease increased 1.35 times.

In addition, the risk of developing systemic lupus erythematosus disease increased 1.14 times, Sjogren’s syndrome 1.13 times, ankylosing spinal cord 1.11 times, and vitiligo 1.11 times.

The researchers explain that these results show that more long-term monitoring of coronavirus-infected patients is necessary.

The researchers explained, “Coronaviruses can potentially cause the development of autoimmune diseases in that they interfere with self-resistance mechanisms,” and “In fact, research results have shown that coronaviruses increase the risk of various autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases.” did it

“This suggests that long-term monitoring and treatment of coronavirus-infected patients is necessary, taking into account demographic factors, disease severity, and vaccination status,” he said.