The diseases to which those who did Covid-19 are prone. What are the effects of vaccination
Covid vaccination, photo: shutterstock
A new international study shows that people who had Covid-19 have a significantly higher risk of developing inflammatory airway disorders, such as asthma, chronic sinusitis and hay fever, news.ro. The researchers, however, emphasize that vaccination against SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes the disease, not only reduces the risk of illness, but seems to protect against such long-term respiratory complications.
The international research team has used an electronic health database in the United States, Trinetx, to investigate the connection between Covid-19 and so-called inflammatory diseases of type 2, a group of chronic conditions in which the immune system reacts to allergens or infections.
One million
The researchers compared almost one million people (973,794) who had Covid-19 with 691,270 people vaccinated against SARS-COV-2 and over 4 million (4,388,409) of healthy persons without documented infection or vaccination.
The results, presented in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, show that people who had Covid-19 had a 66% higher risk of developing asthma, a 74% higher risk of chronic sinusitis and a 27% higher hay fever compared to healthy people.
There has been no increased risk for eosinophilic atopic or esophagitis eczema, an inflammation of the esophagus.
“Our results suggest that the virus that causes Covid-19 can trigger type 2 inflammation in the respiratory tract, but not in other organs,” said Dr. Philip Curman, a doctor and researcher at the Medical and Biostatistic Epidemiology Department of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, which led the research.
Vaccination prevents respiratory complications
Vaccination against the virus has been associated with a reduction in asthma risk, which is 32% lower in vaccinated people compared to healthy unvaccinated ones. Also, the risk of sinusitis and hay fever has registered a slight decrease.
When the people who had Covid-19 were compared to the vaccinated ones, the effect was even clearer: the infected ones had a risk of more than twice as much to develop asthma or chronic sinusitis and a 40% higher risk of hay fever compared to those vaccinated.
“It was interesting to see that vaccination not only protects against the infection itself, but it seems to provide good protection against certain respiratory complications,” says Dr. Curman.
The study had a retrospective character, based on already existing data, which does not allow the formulation of definitive conclusions regarding the causal links. Another limitation is the possibility that certain infections have remained undiagnosed, especially in the cases detected by self -totest.
The research was carried out in collaboration with the University of Lübeck and the Institute of Experimental Dermatology (Lübeck Institute of Experimental Dermatology, Germany), the Technical University of Madrid (Spain) and Bar-Ilan University (Israel).
