Researchers from Germany and the United States found that patients hospitalized with coronavirus infection increased the level of production of autoantiboders – antibodies acting against human tissues and being anticipants of autoimmune diseases. According to scientists, whose article is published in the journal Nature Communications, this is one of the causes of the hard situation of COVID-19 in some patients.
Specialists from the Marburg, Pennsylvanian and Stanford Universities studied blood samples collected from March to April 2020 in 147 patients. Researchers measured the level of antibodies that are generated against the virus, autoantibhelitel and autoantile vehicles against cytokines – signal molecules generated by the cells of the immune system.
More than 60 percent of the COVID-19 hospitalized with COVID-19 revealed anti-liter autoantibodies – in the control group, this figure was 15 percent. According to researchers, the cause of this may be overloading the immune system with a virulent infection. In addition, the formation of an autoantile can occur as a result of the effects of viral proteins that resemble their own proteins of the body seriously ill.
For about 50 percent of patients, blood samples taken in different days were and available, including the first day of hospitalization – which made it possible to analyze the dynamics of the production of antibodies. “A week after hospitalization, about 20 percent of patients developed new antibodies to their own fabrics,” said one of the researchers, Professor Stanford School of Medicine Paul Utz. According to the scientist, the level of autoantibodite was comparable to those in autoimmune diseases.
Researchers note that their discovery emphasizes the need for vaccination – with it the immune system is exposed to only one S-protein of the virus, and the possibility of errors when developing an immune response is reduced to zero.