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Establishing the prevalence of common tissue-specific autoantibodies following severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection
Richter, Alex G Shields, Adrian M Karim, Abid Birch, David Faustini, Sian E Steadman, Lora Ward, Kerensa Plant, Timothy Reynolds, Gary
Richter, Alex G
Shields, Adrian M
Karim, Abid
Birch, David
Faustini, Sian E
Steadman, Lora
Ward, Kerensa
Plant, Timothy
Reynolds, Gary
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Epub Date
Issue Date
2021-06-13
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Abstract
Coronavirus 19 (COVID-19) has been associated with both transient and persistent systemic symptoms that do not appear to be a direct consequence of viral infection. The generation of autoantibodies has been proposed as a mechanism to explain these symptoms. To understand the prevalence of autoantibodies associated with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection, we investigated the frequency and specificity of clinically relevant autoantibodies in 84 individuals previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, suffering from COVID-19 of varying severity in both the acute and convalescent setting. These were compared with results from 32 individuals who were on the intensive therapy unit (ITU) for non-COVID reasons. We demonstrate a higher frequency of autoantibodies in the COVID-19 ITU group compared with non-COVID-19 ITU disease control patients and that autoantibodies were also found in the serum 3–5 months post-COVID-19 infection. Non-COVID patients displayed a diverse pattern of autoantibodies; in contrast, the COVID-19 groups had a more restricted panel of autoantibodies including skin, skeletal muscle and cardiac antibodies. Our results demonstrate that respiratory viral infection with SARS-CoV-2 is associated with the detection of a limited profile of tissue-specific autoantibodies, detectable using routine clinical immunology assays. Further studies are required to determine whether these autoantibodies are specific to SARS-CoV-2 or a phenomenon arising from severe viral infections and to determine the clinical significance of these autoantibodies.
Citation
Alex G Richter, Adrian M Shields, Abid Karim, David Birch, Sian E Faustini, Lora Steadman, Kerensa Ward, Timothy Plant, Gary Reynolds, Tonny Veenith, Adam F Cunningham, Mark T Drayson, David C Wraith, Establishing the prevalence of common tissue-specific autoantibodies following severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection, Clinical and Experimental Immunology, Volume 205, Issue 2, August 2021, Pages 99–105, https://doi.org/10.1111/cei.13623
Publisher
Research Unit
PubMed ID
34082475 (pubmed)
PubMed Central ID
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Journal article
Language
en
Description
© 2021 The Authors. Published by [Name of Publisher]. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence.
The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1111/cei.13623
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ISSN
0009-9104
EISSN
1365-2249
ISBN
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Sponsors
This study was funded as part of the UK Coronavirus Immunology Consortium funded by NIHR and UKRI. This paper presents independent research supported by the NIHR Birmingham Biomedical Research Centre at the University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Birmingham.
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Licence for published version: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International