The corona virus develops a long-lasting immune response to the body, which actually attacks the body instead of the virus, explaining why the infection persists for a variety of symptoms even after the infection is clearly known to some patients, scientists have found.
The research has not yet been published or peer reviewed.
“COVID-19 patients develop autoantibodies that actually interfere with the immune response to the virus,” Aaron Ring, a Yale University immunologist and senior researcher, told the Guardian in a statement Sunday.
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The resulting areas of damage to the body, including the brain, blood vessels, and liver, which are known to suffer in people with symptoms known as “long cov- ers” – recovered from COVID-19, a disease caused by the corona virus after persistent illness, fatigue or suffocation.
To monitor the different severity of COVID-19 patients, Ring worked with Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunity at Yale, and compared them with health hospital staff, looking for immune system antibodies that attack any one of the nearly 3,000 proteins.
Normal antibodies are attached to prevent the spread of viral proteins, autoantibodies form the wrong form and instead attach to proteins in human cells, or they are released, the report said.
Screen shot from a video by Yale University immunologist Aaron Ring. (Web light)
The study, scientists wrote, found that COVID-19 patients had a “dramatic increase in autoantibody reactions” compared to disease-free hospital staff.
Although some autoantibodies were evident in patients before viral infection, others appeared and increased as the disease progressed. More than five percent of hospitalized patients will have autoantibodies damaged. There were more autoantibodies, more severe COVID-19 symptoms.
“We are confident that these autoimmune bodies will be harmful to COVID-19 patients,” Ring said, adding that the harmful effects may continue even if the infection no longer causes the disease.
“Since the antibodies last a long time, it is conceivable that they may contribute to the development of chronic goiter diseases,” he said.
“Post-COVID symptoms can be caused by autoimmune bodies for a long time and persist even after the virus has been removed from the body,” he told the Ring Guardian. “As such, there are immunosuppressive therapies used for rheumatism that can be effective.”
Prolonged COVID is believed to affect about 10% of coronavirus patients aged 18 to 49 years and 20% of those over 70 years of age.
Scientists believe that each patient has more than one type of autoantibody problem.
Researchers are still struggling to gather enough evidence before reaching the final conclusions about the pathogenesis of Ebola and chikungunya.
Countries around the world, including Britain, the United States and Israel, are or have already begun mass vaccination programs against the corona virus.
Since the outbreak of the global epidemic earlier this year, 70,461,926 infections have been reported to the World Health Organization, according to figures released on Sunday. 1,599,704 people were killed.
