COVID can do a lot of damage to your body than you think

What's worrying is that the damage will be permaneng and irreversible, the new study has warned. As per the study, in some cases lungs transplantation is the only hope for patients.

"The lungs affected by Covid-19 also showed striking similarities to the lungs of patients with a condition called idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis - which causes lung tissue to get thick and stiff, making it difficult for the body to take in oxygen. As in pulmonary fibrosis, we found that Covid-19 led to the recruitment of circulating immune cells called monocytes which are likely recruited to the lung to kill the virus. In a fibrotic lung, these cells also promote the formation of fibrotic scar tissue. These cells can be easily and safely sampled and might also help mark patients who are failing to recover from Covid-19," explains Scott Budinger, MD, Ernest S. Bazley professor and chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Northwestern Medicine, and senior author of the study.

"With about 5.5 million active Covid-19 infections currently in the US and thousands of new cases daily, the need for lung transplantation will grow," said Meerut-born Dr Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the lung transplant program at the hospital in Chicago. "By using information from our study, we hope more patients can receive lung transplants and that new treatments will be developed to prevent permanent lung damage," he added.

Surgeons in Austria had performed the world’s first known lung transplant to save the life of a Covid-19 survivor. Dr Ankit Bharat had also conducted the first lung transplant on a Covid-19 patient in the US in June 2020.

Dr. Bharat, who is also the principal investigator of the study published in peer-reviewed Science Translational Medicine journal of the Science Magazine, said organ transplantation may become more frequent for victims of the most severe forms of Covid-19.