Many patients with covid19 produce immune responses against their own bodies tissues
or organs. My name is Professor Alex Richter I'm a Professor of Clinical Immunology at the
University of Birmingham and we've been running a research study looking at the development of
these immune responses in patients with covid19. So we've looked at four groups of patients - we've
looked at patients who are really unwell with covid on the intensive care unit,
We've then also looked at patients following recovery from the intensive care unit
three or four months later, and also patients who've had milder disease
so they've had covid19 in the community and haven't needed to come to hospital.
And then to compare these covid patients we've also looked at other patients from intensive
care that have been there for another reason like another infection or a severe operation
and what we found is that patients in all of the covid groups have a high number of what we call
autoantibodies. So antibodies are important parts of the immune system generated to clear infection
but when the body goes slightly wrong it can misfire and the immune system
recognises itself its own tissues or organs and we call those autoantibodies
So what we found is that patients who are really unwell with covid
have much higher numbers of autoantibodies than those with milder disease
and what we found as well is that these antibodies don't just happen at the time
of the acute infection; that they're long-lasting so we are finding these
autoantibodies three to six months after the infection
When we looked at the ITU patients who didn't have covid we found that a number of them did
have autoantibodies but at a much lower rate than the patients who are on intensive care
with covid19. So that suggests that acute illness is able in some way to generate an
immune response where the body attacks itself but this seems to be a much bigger problem
with covid19. So, why did we look to do this study in the first place?
What we found is a number of unexplained symptoms in covid19, both when patients are really unwell
and in the community. So we've found a number of patients that may have problems with their heart
or severe fatigue or severe muscle problems
and we see these symptoms in patients with known autoimmune diseases.
So what we decided to do was to look and use the tests that we usually use in a clinical setting to
detect patients with these autoimmune heart or muscle problems or skin problems
and undertake these tests in the covid patients
and so the test that we found that are most commonly positive are autoantibodies that affect
the heart, the muscles, and the skin, and these fit with what we are finding
in covid19 patients in convalescence.
So this doesn't necessarily mean that these antibodies
are causing disease but we have a really really interesting observation here
and what we now need to do is we need to look at patients over a period of time
who develop symptoms either during acute covid or in recovery from covid
and we need to see whether these autoantibodies
are directly associated with the clinical symptoms that these patients are suffering from
and if we can make that clinical link between the antibodies and the patient's symptoms
we can then start to screen patients for these autoantibodies.
So we're going to hopefully be working with some of the national collaborations who have
these long-term treatments so we hopefully will be able to have an answer within the next few months
as to whether this is the case and this then offers the exciting possibility
that we may be able to intervene with treatments going forward.