Published on 26 April, 2022

Long-COVID: A Post-Infectious Autoimmune Syndrome, Understanding Commonalities and Biological Clues from Other Post Infections Autoimmune Syndromes

In this presentation Dr. Craig Shimasaki discusses biological, molecular, and clinical data explaining how molecular mimicry, through infections such as Strep, Lyme, and now SARS-CoV-2, can trigger immune dysregulation including autoantibodies directed against targets in the brain that interrupt normal neurologic functions.

Long-COVID is understood to be a condition where individuals experience a variety of neurologic, psychiatric, cardiovascular, and pulmonary symptoms many months after initially contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Other post-infectious autoimmune syndromes may help us understand Long-COVID such as, persistent neurologic Lyme, Pediatric Acute Onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome (PANS), Autoimmune Encephalopathy (AE), Basal Ganglia Encephalitis (BGE), and others.

Our understanding of Long-COVID is rapidly evolving. Infection-triggered autoimmune syndromes and molecular mimicry are medical models that may help us understand the pathophysiology of Long-COVID and lead to the integration of new diagnostics and more effective therapies to treat this rapidly expanding disorder.