• hackitfast@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    10 months ago

    Does anyone know yet if long COVID is an auto-immune disease? I only assume it is but otherwise don’t know.

    • Natanael@slrpnk.net
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      10 months ago

      It seems like a mix. Part from organ damage, part from misbehaving immune response in some people

    • nfh@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      10 months ago

      I just found a paper in trying to figure this out, but it seems like the author of this study wasn’t really looking at it as an autoimmune disease, but a post-viral syndrome like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) which is partially immunological, but not autoimmune. ME/CFS has been known about a lot longer than long COVID, and seems to be better (if not yet well) understood.

      Reading though a lot of the sites with information on ME/CFS, it makes intuitive sense that long COVID has more in common with it than something like rheumatoid arthritis. I hope that long COVID brings attention to ME/CFS, or in studying similar diseases we’re able to learn more about their common causes/treatments, or generally understand both better.

    • psud@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      COVID is a virus, so not an autoimmune illness. Long COVID might be partly autoimmune

    • whoisearth@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      10 months ago

      All I heard overpandemic was that COVID was triggering diabetes in people which makes sense because we don’t know what triggers diabetes but one of the theories is it’s caused by viral stress.

      I bet any money they will one day find a genetic mutation like the one in BRCA2 that causes cancer.