Autoimmunity is a hallmark of post-COVID syndrome, 2022, Rojas et al

Abstract

Autoimmunity has emerged as a characteristic of the post-COVID syndrome (PCS), which may be related to sex. In order to further investigate the relationship between SARS-CoV-2 and autoimmunity in PCS, a clinical and serological assessment on 100 patients was done. Serum antibody profiles against self-antigens and infectious agents were evaluated by an antigen array chip for 116 IgG and 104 IgM antibodies. Thirty pre-pandemic healthy individuals were included as a control group. The median age of patients was 49 years (IQR: 37.8 to 55.3). There were 47 males. The median post-COVID time was 219 (IQR: 143 to 258) days.

Latent autoimmunity and polyautoimmunity were found in 83% and 62% of patients, respectively. Three patients developed an overt autoimmune disease. IgG antibodies against IL-2, CD8B, and thyroglobulin were found in more than 10% of the patients. Other IgG autoantibodies, such as anti-interferons, were positive in 5–10% of patients. Anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibodies were found in > 85% of patients and were positively correlated with autoantibodies, age, and body mass index (BMI). Few autoantibodies were influenced by age and BMI. There was no effect of gender on the over- or under-expression of autoantibodies. IgG anti-IFN-λ antibodies were associated with the persistence of respiratory symptoms. In summary, autoimmunity is characteristic of PCS, and latent autoimmunity correlates with humoral response to SARS-CoV-2.

Open access, https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-022-03328-4

 

This sort of mishmash of results basically means they didn't find anything interesting I suspect.

 

Yes, we have known from the outset that autoantibodies occur in normal healthy people but less frequently. The stuff about them being useful is speculation. We just know they are there. We probably know why they are too but that gets complicated. They are almost certainly noise rather than function.

You are absolutely right that the study needs not just normal controls but matched controls who have had Covid and are well. If the authors do not give control rates, as you indicate, then the paper is worthless and probably irresponsible.

 

This simply a symptom of how much biomedical research has collapsed in the last twenty years.
The situation is the same at UCL now. Nobody has a clue what they are doing. Paper after paper is produced based on gibberish. This is a real change. It was noted by James Le Fanu in his Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine. Something went wrong in the incentive structure around 1985 that by 2000 had destroyed the intellectual base.

The straw that broke the camel's back was the commercialisation of the literature system. There is no longer meaningful peer review most of the time.

The situation is quite similar to the way the kleptocracy has taken over public services in socialist (or for that matter centrist) countries. It suits those who form the self-perpetuating oligarchy.

You might think this extreme but note that despite a string of groundbreaking developments in autoimmunity in the 1990s, for disorders like RA nothing new has emerged in twenty years now. Things have moved forward in multiple sclerosis simply because it took time to catch up with progress for other diseases. (The recent finding on EBV may be the one exception to all this.)

 

I haven't looked at this, and my knowledge is very limited. I'm wondering about the quality of the tests; I've seen comments here that some studies use linear peptide arrays. So the results are unreliable to begin with.

There's a thread here* re a better technique and I think Solve funded one of the Yale group to look for autoantibodies in ME.

So there are ways to run reliable tests - begs the question of why supposed peer reviewed journals are publishing poor quality studies --- commercialisation of the literature system seems a reasonable suggestion. Why aren't alternatives taking off ---?


*https://www.s4me.info/threads/reap-...-the-human-exoproteome-2021-wang-et-al.20747/

 

I don't find it extreme and I'm not in the medical profession just watching and experiencing it. It reflects what I see. The 'get to the bottom of it' seems to be actively the opposite of the NHS drives of recent years (more 'mass standardisation'). I'd add in the change to the REF vs RAE 2008 in as far as using citations over objective assessments and the way that impact has ended up being implemented (which many academics found hard to get to grips with) - which whilst perhaps with some worthy ideas behind it, had led to 'easy to understand' paradigms over 'correct and good methodology' getting a nice foothold.

It's become like social media 'likes', politics and networking can drive little kingdoms with no hard quality-assessment to many it transparent. Added to reduced peer review on this basis and the hierarchical issues/power bases implicit in UK systems. As they say in business 'culture is strategy'.

 

Ah, now that would be the late Robert Maxwell's great contribution with his Pergamon Press if I have it right.