Some patients with covid 19 accidentally attack their own immune system.
This was revealed in a medical study conducted in the United States.
This process is known as autoimmunity and can damage many organs.
Although antibodies are an important defense weapon against disease, many times the immune system produces auto-antibodies that mistakenly attack healthy cells in the body.
A Stanford University study found that the severe severity of covid 19 forces the immune system to make auto-antibodies that invade healthy tissues and cause inflammatory diseases.
A study of 147 patients with covid 19 examined blood samples.
The study found auto-antibodies in blood samples in 50% of patients, compared to less than 15% in 41 healthy people.
Blood samples from 48 patients of covid 19 were collected on different days along with the day of hospitalization.
This gave researchers the opportunity to track the process of making auto-antibodies.
He said that at the time of hospitalization, the patients did not have these auto-antibodies, but within a week, 20 percent of the patients developed new antibodies that invaded their tissues.
He urged people to get vaccinated against covid 19 and said that they do not know in advance whether the severity of the disease will be moderate or not.
"If you have a serious illness, autoimmune diseases can cause lifelong problems," he said.
"We haven't studied patients for a long time to see if auto-antibodies are present one or two years after the onset of the disease," he added.
He said that it is not possible to say anything definite yet but there is a risk of an autoimmune disease which needs to be confirmed.
The results of the study were published in the medical journal Nature Communications.
Earlier in July, Imperial College London in the UK discovered a specific pattern of antibodies in Longwood patients that is not seen in other patients or healthy people.
Researchers have dubbed it auto-antibodies, which attack healthy body tissues instead of fighting disease and keep the disease going.
Longwood patients can experience a number of symptoms for months, including severe fatigue, difficulty breathing, muscle aches and headaches.
Researchers say it is difficult to say how many long covid cases there may be in the near future, but it is devastating for young people, whose lives could be severely damaged.
