According to the largest study of its kind, contracting COVID-19 may increase the risk of developing an autoimmune disease by 43 percent in the months following the infection, Live Science reported this week.

According to Anuradhaa Subramanian, a research fellow in health informatics at the University of Birmingham, who was not involved in the study, “The impact of this study is huge — it’s the strongest evidence so far answering this question of COVID-19 and autoimmune disease risk.”

The research found that COVID-19 was most strongly associated with an increased risk of vasculitis, a condition that involves inflammation of the blood vessels. The group that had previously contracted the virus had a 63 percent higher rate of a specific type of vasculitis called arteritis temporalis compared to the uninfected group. Prior COVID-19 infection was also strongly linked to autoimmune-driven issues with the thyroid, psoriasis, and rheumatoid arthritis, a condition that causes joint swelling, the report continued.

newstarget Huge new study finds COVID-19 linked to 40% spike in risk for autoimmune disease