A patient population at increased risk for severe COVID-19 may help researchers understand why some people develop long-term, persistent symptoms (long COVID) while others do not.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, Wallace and his colleagues at the Brigham and MGH have paid special attention to this group of patients to find insights that could help inform their treatment as well as the care of broader patient populations experiencing long COVID.
"At the very beginning of the pandemic, we joined forces to identify every rheumatic disease patient with COVID seen at our institutions so that we could follow their clinical course and collect survey and blood data," said co-corresponding author Jeffrey Sparks, MD, MMSc, of the Division of Rheumatology, Inflammation, and Immunity at Brigham and Women's Hospital.
"At first, we thought we might be doing this for a month or two, but the work continues today, and we are gaining important insights about a potential immune mechanism that may lead to long COVID, especially among patients with rheumatic disease."who recovered from COVID-19. Specifically, investigators measured antibody responses against key antigens of SARS-CoV-2, comparing patients who developed long COVID to those who did not.
The team found an unexpected signal tied to OC43, a coronavirus that causes common-cold-like symptoms. Individuals with long COVID were more likely to have antibody responses specific to this form of coronavirus. The authors note that their study is restricted to individuals with rheumatic diseases, and further research is needed to determine if their findings will apply more widely to patients without a pre-existing autoimmune disorder.
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