Since the COVID-19 pandemic first swept the world in 2020, the chronic condition known as long COVID has baffled the medical community. In the years since, scientists have tried to determine why a subset of patients infected with the virus develop lingering - and sometimes disabling - symptoms that can last long after the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection.
A new study co-led by Yale's Akiko Iwasaki yields intriguing new insights.
Writing in the journal CELL, the team of researchers report strong evidence that, in at least a subset of people with long COVID, the body's immune system launches an autoimmune attack against the patient's own cells, causing a cascade of symptoms such as fatigue, brain fog, weakness, and other hallmarks of the condition. Autoimmune disorders occur when the body's immune system attacks its own tissues.
The findings suggest that long COVID may overlap with autoimmune diseases, even though it doesn't perfectly resemble any known autoimmune condition, said Iwasaki, Sterling Professor of Immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and co-senior author of the study.
