The "rogue antibodies" killing COVID patients

[PeteS in CA]

The "rogue antibodies" killing COVID patients

https://hotair.com/jazz-shaw/2021/09/02/the-rogue-antibodies-killing-covid-patients-n413296

A report from the journal Nature this week provides some rather ominous news for scientists battling the COVID pandemic, but it may also open the door to new research that could save the lives of countless people in the future who are stricken with many different diseases. The report is based on a massive, long-term study of blood samples from 3,595 patients from 38 countries who developed critical COVID-19 (patients who were ill enough to require ICU care). But this study wasn’t focused on the patients’ viral loads. It looked at the number of incidents where patients had “autoantibodies” in their blood. These “rogue” antibodies do the exact opposite of what you normally want your immune system to be doing. They block the interferons your immune system generates to fight off a virus. And it turns out that a lot of people had them, particularly among the elderly.
...
One of the key findings was that these autoantibodies are not caused by the novel coronavirus. They show up naturally in at least ten percent of the uninfected population, including people who never develop any noticeable medical complications as a result. It’s the virology equivalent of a horror movie where the calls are coming from inside the house. But once a patient contracts COVID, the autoantibodies go to work, attacking and blocking the interferons that your body is producing to fight off the virus. This applied to both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients.

The demographic spread of the presence of these rogue antibodies was nowhere near random in terms of age groups. The autoantibodies were present in 13.6% of the patients in this study, which is already an alarmingly high percentage. But they were only seen in 9.6% of patients below the age of 40. Conversely, they showed up in 21% of those over 80. Nearly twenty percent of the patients who died from COVID tested positive for these autoantibodies. This discovery could help to explain why COVID strikes the elderly so much harder and more frequently than younger patients.

This is interesting, not only in treating Covid, but possibly in treating other infectious diseases (and maybe some auto-immune diseases?).

[massadvj]

The demographic spread of the presence of these rogue antibodies was nowhere near random in terms of age groups. The autoantibodies were present in 13.6% of the patients in this study, which is already an alarmingly high percentage. But they were only seen in 9.6% of patients below the age of 40. Conversely, they showed up in 21% of those over 80. Nearly twenty percent of the patients who died from COVID tested positive for these autoantibodies. This discovery could help to explain why COVID strikes the elderly so much harder and more frequently than younger patients.

It is an interesting article, and shows how "significance" does not necessarily mean "determinant."  The fact that 20 percent of those who died had the rogue antibodies, versus around 10 percent of the population as a whole, means that the presence of these antibodies was a significant contributing factor, but by no means the only one.  In fact, 80 percent of the people who died did not have the rogue antibody, so its existence meant nothing in the vast majority of terminal cases.

Still, if it can be dealt with it would save a large number of lives.