Disruption of the immune system plays an important role in secondary diseases such as covid-19 and chronic covid. US scientists have now apparently identified the main cause of severe MIS-C inflammatory syndrome in children following SARS-CoV-2 infection. It is an autoimmune reaction.
MIS-C as a “multisystem inflammatory syndrome” caused concern in Austria, especially at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. “SARS-CoV-2 infections are usually mild in children. However, in rare cases, after one to two weeks, a severe inflammatory disease with fever, skin rash, and heart and blood vessel dysfunction may develop. Low blood pressure is life-threatening in children,” the German Medical Journal reported. Written by
In most cases, hospitalization with the administration of anti-inflammatory cortisone and other drugs to stabilize blood flow helps. But in the United States, there have been 79 deaths among children out of nearly 9,700 reported cases (as of July 2024). In Austria, soon after the outbreak of the epidemic, pediatricians also reported several dozen such cases. According to a study in “Nature” (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07722-4), Joseph Terisi from the San Zuckerberg Biohub at the University of San Francisco and his co-authors have discovered the real cause of the disease, Covid. -19 came the problem.
“Molecular Mimicry”
“A possible cause of autoimmune diseases is molecular mimicry. Antibodies inadvertently attack the body’s own proteins because they contain sites with the same amino acid sequence (epitope) as the protein from the pathogen,” the German Medical Journal wrote about the study. . During further studies, scientists discovered the sequence of amino acids in the protein of SARS-CoV-2 and many cells of the human organism.
It is part of a protein called SNX8. It plays an important role in the transport of substances within cells, but is also involved in the regulation of the innate immune system.
This is how MIS-C can develop in children as part of the Covid-19 disease: as a protective reaction against SARS-CoV-2, antibodies are also formed against proteins within the viruses. Coincidentally, they bind equally to the amino acid epitopes of the Covid-19 pathogen and to coincidentally deceptively similar ones in the SNX8 protein of healthy body cells. B and T cells then go berserk and attack all healthy cells that contain SNX8, according to the German Medical Journal study.
The result is, after a short delay, a strong inflammatory reaction that affects the entire organism. MIS-C may involve interactions between several autoimmune reactions based on misdirected antibodies, but the prime example is probably SNX8.
