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Rogue antibodies could be driving severe COVID-19

Evidence is growing that self-attacking ‘autoantibodies’ could be the key to understanding some of the worst cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection.
  1. Roxanne Khamsi

    1. Roxanne Khamsi is a science journalist based in Montreal, Canada.

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Medical workers wearing protective gear treat a COVID-19 patient lying on his front on a bed in an intensive-care unit

Physicians treat a person with COVID-19 at a hospital’s intensive-care unit in the Czech Republic. Credit: Gabriel Kuchta/Getty

More than a year after COVID-19 emerged, many mysteries persist about the disease: why do some people get so much sicker than others? Why does lung damage sometimes continue to worsen well after the body seems to have cleared the SARS-CoV-2 virus? And what is behind the extended, multi-organ illness that lasts for months in people with ‘long COVID’? A growing number of studies suggest that some of these questions might be explained by the immune system mistakenly turning against the body — a phenomenon known as autoimmunity.

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Nature 590, 29-31 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00149-1

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