Preprint Autoantibody landscapes in neurological Long COVID and post-COVID cognitive impairment show heterogeneity without a shared disease signature Chakravar

[Jaybee00]

Abstract​

Background: Neurological Long COVID (n-LC) includes persistent cognitive and autonomic symptoms after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Prior studies of post-COVID conditions have described diverse humoral autoreactivity, but findings are heterogeneous, and it remains unclear whether n-LC is associated with a consistent CNS-directed humoral signature. Methods: We performed a cross-cohort case-control analysis to detect autoantibodies in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and serum from n-LC participants. In the Yale COVID Mind Study cohort, CSF from n-LC participants and from pre-pandemic and post-COVID asymptomatic controls was assessed by mouse brain immunofluorescence and proteome-wide phage immunoprecipitation sequencing (PhIP-Seq), with candidate reactivities evaluated by orthogonal assays and supervised modeling. In the Epidemiology, Immunology, and Clinical Characteristics of Emerging Infectious Diseases with Pandemic Potential (IDCRP EPICC) cohort, post-COVID sera collected prior to iPhone- or iPad-based cognitive screening were profiled by PhIP-Seq and compared between participants with and without cognitive impairment. Results: CSF immunoreactivity on mouse brain tissue was observed in both n-LC and controls, with similar overall frequencies, although n-LC participants more often showed nuclear-predominant staining patterns. PhIP-Seq identified sparse, largely patient-specific peptide reactivities to nuclear and neuronal proteins in CSF and serum. Supervised models provided limited discrimination between cases and controls. Candidate autoantigens had limited disease specificity on orthogonal testing. EPICC serum autoantibody profiling similarly failed to distinguish individuals with and without cognitive impairment. Conclusions: Across cohorts and compartments, n-LC did not exhibit a shared autoantibody signature. These findings support the absence of a dominant, common CNS autoantibody-mediated mechanism in n-LC.

Autoantibody landscapes in neurological Long COVID and post-COVID cognitive impairment show heterogeneity without a shared disease signature

Background: Neurological Long COVID (n-LC) includes persistent cognitive and autonomic symptoms after SARS-CoV-2 infection. Prior studies of post-COVID conditions have described diverse humoral autoreactivity, but findings are heterogeneous, and it remains unclear whether n-LC is associated with...

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[SNT Gatchaman]

Pretty clear statement against autoimmunity, despite relatively small numbers —

Across tissue-based assays and peptide-level, whole-human-proteome PhIP-Seq profiling, the data consistently reveal a lack of convergent, disease-specific autoantibody signatures.

A key limitation is cohort size, particularly for the Yale COVID Mind study CSF (n=31; n-LC), and may not capture the full biological heterogeneity of n-LC symptoms. However, even within the larger EPICC cohort (n=73), LR achieved only modest discrimination (AUC=0.62) from controls (n=52), suggesting that the observed lack of a shared antibody signature might reflect true biological diversity rather than limited statistical power.