Researchers have identified the immune cells that appear to drive autoantibody production after COVID-19 infection, and they turn out to be a subtype that has also been linked to lupus. The finding offers a possible mechanism for something clinicians have observed since the pandemic began: that some people develop antibodies attacking their own tissue after the virus clears.
The study, published in the journal Immunity by researchers at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle and their partners, is laboratory research rather than a clinical trial. Its central analysis rests on deep immune profiling of 12 age-matched women, drawn from a larger cohort of 209 infected participants, with a separate group of 101 used to validate key results.
