OLDHAM, UNITED KINGDOM – NOVEMBER 24: A person wearing a protective face mask walks past … [+]
A recent study involving over 22 million adult patients from South Korea and Japan found that acute Covid-19 infection could also be related to a better risk of developing autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases as much as a yr after infection.
These include diseases akin to rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, Sjögren’s syndrome, systemic sclerosis, polymyalgia rheumatica, mixed connective tissue disease, dermatomyositis, polymyositis, polyarteritis nodosa or vasculitis. According to the study’s findings, vaccinated patients who’ve survived a severe Covid-19 infection could even have an increased risk of developing certainly one of these diseases.
The researchers, based in Seoul, South Korea, analyzed data from two national population-based cohort studies in Japan and Korea to look at how Covid-19 affects the long-term risk of autoimmune inflammatory rheumatic diseases (AIRD). The data got here from greater than 10 million Korean and 12 million Japanese adults older than 20 years. These included patients who tested positive for Covid-19 in 2020 to 2021.
The team was given access to demographic and mortality data for all study participants from each country’s insurance database. They also examined participants’ history of heart problems, chronic kidney disease and respiratory disease.
Among South Korean participants, 3.9% had a history of Covid-19 and nearly 1% had been diagnosed with flu previously. The proportion of Japanese participants who had Covid-19 was higher at 8.2% and, again, almost 1% reported having a case of the flu.
“We found an increased risk of developing AIRD up to 12 months after COVID-19 diagnosis compared to influenza-infected and uninfected control patients. Higher severity of acute COVID-19 illness was associated with a higher risk of an AIRD event,” the researchers noted.
However, the researchers acknowledged that the study has several limitations. Their results got here from a time of the Covid-19 pandemic, before the Omicron variant had emerged. The team also emphasized that certain AIRD results were unusual and that a few of their estimates were “inaccurate.”
Three Studies Research published in 2023 also found an increased risk of Autoimmune Inflammatory Rheumatic Diseases (AIRD) in individuals who tested positive for Covid-19 in comparison with those that didn’t receive a Covid-19 diagnosis. A study published in Clinical Rheumatology Study participants who contracted Covid-19 in 2020 reported a 42.63% increased risk of developing an autoimmune disease after becoming infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
An autoimmune rheumatic disease affects and affects a goal cell and human tissue. The commonest condition is rheumatoid arthritis, wherein the immune system attacks healthy cells, causing inflammation, swelling and debilitating pain in multiple joints.
Rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) mostly affect women, with a prevalence rate greater than 1% of the adult female population within the United States. Because these diseases occur primarily in middle to late maturity, premature heart problems and osteoporosis are the most important comorbidities of autoimmune rheumatic diseases.
The study was recently published within the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.
