Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what research his Department has conducted into changes in the number of cases of auto immune disorders since the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Department, through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), has funded several studies which explore links between SARS‑CoV‑2 infection and autoimmunity.

For example, in April 2025, researchers funded by the NIHR Imperial Biomedical Research Centre and the NIHR Health Protection Research Unit in respiratory infections at Imperial College published a review on the mechanisms through which autoimmune responses can arise during and after viral infection, focusing on the evidence for B-cell dysregulation and autoantibody production in acute and long COVID.

In 2023, NIHR-supported researchers at the University of Birmingham conducted analysis of United Kingdom primary care records to review the incidence of immune-mediated inflammatory disorders, such as type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, and psoriasis. The NIHR has also commissioned targeted studies to investigate underlying mechanisms. These include The immunologic and virologic determinants of long COVID study, from Cardiff University, which is examining whether SARS‑CoV‑2 infection can trigger persistent immune activation or autoimmune processes in the post-COVID period. Another NIHR-funded project, Immune analysis of long COVID from Imperial College London, is investigating post-COVID immune dysfunction.

NIHR-funded research is published and made publicly available, with findings shared through journals and NIHR Evidence.