A report in the journal Nature this week provides some pretty disastrous news for scientists battling the COVID pandemic, but it could also open the door to new research that could save the lives of countless people in the future affected by many diseases. different. The report is based on a massive, long-term study of blood samples from 3,595 patients from 38 countries who developed critical COVID-19 (patients who were ill enough to require ICU care). But this study did not focus on patients’ viral loads. The number of incidents in which patients had “autoantibodies” in their blood was analyzed. These “rogue” antibodies do the exact opposite of what you normally want your immune system to do. They block the interferons generated by your immune system to fight a virus. And it turns out that a lot of people had it, especially among the elderly.
According to an extensive international study, antibodies that turn against elements of our own immune defenses are a key factor in serious illness and death after SARS-CoV-2 infection in some people. These rogue antibodies, known as autoantibodies, are also present in a small proportion of healthy and infected infected individuals, and their prevalence increases with age, which may help explain why older people are at higher risk for suffer severe COVID-19.
The findings, published Aug. 19 in Science Immunology, provide solid evidence to support an observation made by the same research team last October. Led by immunologist Jean-Laurent Casanova at Rockefeller University in New York, the researchers found that about 10% of people with severe COVID-19 had autoantibodies that attack and block type 1 interferons, protein molecules in the brain. blood that play a critical role in the fight against viral infections.
One of the key conclusions was that these autoantibodies are not caused by the new coronavirus. They occur naturally in at least ten percent of the uninfected population, including people who never present with notable medical complications as a result. It is the virology equivalent of a horror movie where the calls come from inside the house. But once a patient contracts COVID, the autoantibodies will work, attacking and blocking the interferons the body produces to fight the virus. This applied to both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.
The demographic spread of the presence of these rogue antibodies was not at all random with respect to age groups. Autoantibodies were present in 13.6% of patients in this study, which is already an alarmingly high percentage. But they were only observed in 9.6% of patients under 40 years of age. In contrast, they occurred in 21% of those over 80 years of age. Nearly twenty percent of patients who died of COVID tested positive for these autoantibodies. This finding could help explain why COVID attacks older people much more strongly and frequently than younger patients.
Although research on this specific topic is just beginning, the scientists who conducted the study believe that understanding this phenomenon could lead to a significant leap in the treatment of all kinds of viral diseases. Because they are not specific for COVID, autoantibodies attack interferons produced in response to almost all viral infections. If they can figure out a way to frustrate them, the resulting treatment could greatly increase patients ’natural immunity or resistance to diseases ranging from seasonal flu to HIV.
Unfortunately, it will take time to bring this research to the point where they can (hopefully) use it to remove people’s autoantibodies, so it is unlikely to bring any benefit to the current harvest of patients coming out of this pandemic. But if it bears fruit before the next pandemic erupts in the city, this could end up being a revolutionary development.