Abstract
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 this phenomenon in
more detail, 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 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 severe COVID-19 induces a
pattern of autoantibodies that may correlate with and contribute to the
immune pathology associated with the long-term sequelae of infection.