{"id":95587,"date":"2024-07-16T13:32:39","date_gmt":"2024-07-16T13:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/16\/rogue-antibodies-may-cause-some-long-covid-symptoms\/"},"modified":"2024-07-16T13:32:39","modified_gmt":"2024-07-16T13:32:39","slug":"rogue-antibodies-may-cause-some-long-covid-symptoms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/07\/16\/rogue-antibodies-may-cause-some-long-covid-symptoms\/","title":{"rendered":"Rogue antibodies may cause some long COVID symptoms\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><\/div> \r\n<br><br><div style=\"clear:both\">\n<style><![CDATA[\n.subscribe-cta {\n  color: black;\n  margin-top: 0px;\n  background-color: #D5DDEE;\n  background-size: cover;\n  padding: 20px;\n  border: 1px solid black;\n  border-top: 5px solid black;\n  clear: both;\n}\n\n.centered {\n  text-align:center;\n  margin:auto;\n}\n\n]]><\/style>\n<!-- \/wp:html -->\n\n<!-- wp:group {\"className\":\"subscribe-cta\"} -->\n<div id=\"subscribeConversion\" class=\"wp-block-group subscribe-cta\"><!-- wp:heading {\"textAlign\":\"center\",\"style\":{\"typography\":{\"fontSize\":\"2em\"}}} -->\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:2em\">Take our AI Survey<\/h2>\n<!-- \/wp:heading -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph {\"align\":\"center\",\"style\":{\"typography\":{\"fontSize\":\"1.1em\"}}} -->\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center\" style=\"font-size:1.1em\"><em>Science News <\/em>has partnered with <a href=\"https:\/\/trustingnews.org\/about-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Trusting News<\/a> to gather feedback on the potential use of AI in journalism. <strong>Currently, we do not publish any content produced by generative AI<\/strong> (see our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/about-science-news\/journalism-standards-practices#ai-policy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">policy<\/a>). We do want to hear your views on how <em>Science News<\/em> could use AI responsibly.  Let us know by participating in a short 10 question survey.<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:spacer {\"height\":\"20px\"} -->\n\n<!-- \/wp:spacer -->\n\n<!-- wp:buttons {\"className\":\"centered\",\"layout\":{\"type\":\"flex\",\"justifyContent\":\"center\"}} -->\n\n<!-- \/wp:buttons --><\/div>\n<!-- \/wp:group -->\n\n\n<p>The work could also offer\u00a0\u201cpeace of mind to some of the long-haulers,\u201d Mukherjee says. As someone who has endured long COVID herself, she understands that when patients don\u2019t know the cause of their suffering, it can add to their anxiety. They wonder, \u201cWhat the hell is going wrong with me?\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With more than\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/long-covid-universal-definition\">200 documented symptoms<\/a>\u00a0that can mix and match in seemingly endless m\u00e9langes, long COVID is an especially difficult disease to crack\u00a0<em>(SN: 6\/12\/24)<\/em>. \u201cTeasing out the mechanisms that lead to these symptoms has been the real challenge,\u201d Mukherjee says.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Some clues so far have pointed to autoantibodies. These can ramp up in the blood during a SARS-CoV-2 infection, but their levels often dial back down as a person recovers. In people with long COVID, though, scientists have shown that autoantibodies can stick around long after the initial illness has passed.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But research so far hasn\u2019t revealed \u201cwhether these autoantibodies are mere bystanders or active contributors to long COVID symptoms,\u201d wrote bioRxiv.org study coauthor Hung-Jen Chen of the Amsterdam University Medical Center and his colleagues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote\"><blockquote><p>\u201cTeasing out the mechanisms that lead to these symptoms has been the real challenge.\u201d<\/p><cite>Manali Mukherjee, translational immunologist<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Working independently, Chen\u2019s team and immunologist Akiko Iwasaki\u2019s group at Yale University each collected antibodies from dozens of people with and without long COVID, injected those antibodies into mice and then tested the animals\u2019 behaviors.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Antibodies that came from patients who reported dizziness caused a noticeable loss of balance in mice, Iwasaki found. And both groups discovered that long COVID antibodies could make mice more sensitive to pain. In an experiment by Iwasaki\u2019s group that tested the animals\u2019 ability to tolerate standing on a hot plate, mice that received antibodies from long COVID patients showed signs of pain after about seven seconds, compared with about 10 seconds in mice that got antibodies from healthy people.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those mice that became extra-sensitive to pain largely had received antibodies from patients who themselves had chronic pain, Iwasaki\u2019s group reported. That enhanced sensitivity could be due to antibody attacks harming nerves. After injection, the mice developed damaged nerve fibers in the skin.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Scientists have proposed\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/long-covid-biomarkers-blood-paxlovid\">many hypotheses for what causes long COVID<\/a>, including SARS-CoV-2 virus lingering in the tissues and the reawakening of dormant herpes viruses\u00a0<em>(SN: 3\/4\/24).<\/em>\u00a0Those elements may still play a role in some people\u2019s long COVID symptoms, but for pain, at least, rogue antibodies seem to be enough to kick-start the symptom all on their own. It\u2019s not an out-of-the-blue role for autoantibodies; scientists suspect they may also be involved in other conditions that cause people pain, including fibromyalgia and\u00a0myalgic encephalomyelitis\/chronic fatigue syndrome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if doctors could identify which long COVID patients have pain-linked autoantibodies, they could try to reduce the amount circulating in the blood, says Iwasaki, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. \u201cI think that would really be a game changer for this particular set of patients.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n<p>The work represents a \u201cvery strong level of evidence\u201d that autoantibodies could cause harm in people with long COVID, says Ignacio Sanz, an immunologist at Emory University in Atlanta. Both he and Mukherjee would like to see the findings validated in larger sets of participants. And the real clincher, Sanz says, would come from longer-term studies. If scientists could show that patients\u2019 symptoms ease as these rogue antibodies disappear over time, that\u2019d be an even surer sign of their guilt.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n<br>\r\n<br><a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/rogue-antibodies-long-covid-symptoms\">Source link <\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Take our AI Survey Science News has partnered with Trusting News to gather feedback on the potential use of AI in journalism. Currently, we do not publish any content produced by generative AI (see our policy). We do want to hear your views on how Science News could use AI responsibly. Let us know by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.sciencenews.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/070924_mr_longcovid-antibodies_feat.jpg?fit=800%2C450&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[606],"tags":[56952,2120,1404,72346,7238],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95589,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95587\/revisions\/95589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}