Prevalent and persistent new-onset autoantibodies in mild to severe COVID-19Show others and affiliations
2024 (English)In: Nature Communications, E-ISSN 2041-1723, Vol. 15, no 1, article id 8941Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Autoantibodies have been shown to be implied in COVID-19 but the emerging autoantibody repertoire remains largely unexplored. We investigated the new-onset autoantibody repertoire in 525 healthcare workers and hospitalized COVID-19 patients at five time points over a 16-month period in 2020 and 2021 using proteome-wide and targeted protein and peptide arrays. Our results show that prevalent new-onset autoantibodies against a wide range of antigens emerged following SARS-CoV-2 infection in relation to pre-infectious baseline samples and remained elevated for at least 12 months. We found an increased prevalence of new-onset autoantibodies after severe COVID-19 and demonstrated associations between distinct new-onset autoantibodies and neuropsychiatric symptoms post-COVID-19. Using epitope mapping, we determined the main epitopes of selected new-onset autoantibodies, validated them in independent cohorts of neuro-COVID and pre-pandemic healthy controls, and identified sequence similarities suggestive of molecular mimicry between main epitopes and the conserved fusion peptide of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike glycoprotein. Our work describes the complexity and dynamics of the autoantibody repertoire emerging with COVID-19 and supports the need for continued analysis of the new-onset autoantibody repertoire to elucidate the mechanisms of the post-COVID-19 condition.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Nature Research , 2024. Vol. 15, no 1, article id 8941
National Category
Immunology in the medical area
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-355430DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-53356-5ISI: 001336260600001PubMedID: 39414823Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85206586410OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-355430DiVA, id: diva2:1909174
Note
QC 20241111
2024-10-302024-10-302024-11-11Bibliographically approved