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In a significant advancement, researchers at Emory University have discovered that autoantibodies in the nasal cavity may help predict the severity of COVID-19 infections. This insight allows healthcare providers to assess infection severity sooner, potentially enabling more personalized treatment plans for high-risk patients and improving clinical outcomes.
The Emory study, published in Science Translational Medicine, followed 125 COVID-19 patients for nearly two years, analyzing antibody responses in both blood and nasal samples. Researchers found that over 70% of patients with mild or moderate COVID-19 produced specific nasal autoantibodies that correlated with fewer symptoms and a quicker recovery. These nasal autoantibodies may help regulate immune response by reducing excessive inflammation, which could allow the body to manage the virus more effectively.
“Generally, autoantibodies are associated with pathology and a negative prognosis, causing increased inflammation that would indicate more severe disease,” said Eliver Ghosn, senior author and faculty member at Emory’s Lowance Center for Human Immunology and Emory Vaccine Center. “What’s interesting about our findings is that with COVID-19, it’s the opposite. The nasal autoantibodies showed up soon after infection, targeting an important inflammatory molecule produced by the patient’s cells. These autoantibodies latched on to the molecule, likely to prevent excessive inflammation, and faded as people recovered, suggesting the body uses them to keep things in balance.”
The Emory team’s discovery challenges previous assumptions, as past studies linked autoantibodies in the blood to severe COVID-19 outcomes. This study, however, suggests that nasal autoantibodies could serve a protective role, with a specific immune response occurring directly in the nasal cavity—the primary site of infection for respiratory viruses like COVID-19. According to Ghosn, “The key to this puzzle was to look directly at the site of infection, in the nose, instead of the blood. While autoantibodies in the blood were linked to bad prognosis, producing them only in the nose soon after infection is linked to efficient recovery.”
To better measure these protective nasal autoantibodies, Emory researchers developed a new tool called FlowBEAT. This biotechnology allows for highly sensitive and efficient measurements of various antibody types in nasal samples, potentially aiding in the assessment of severity for COVID-19 and other respiratory infections. If nasal autoantibody levels indicate a heightened risk of severe response, healthcare providers could use the information to initiate early interventions for high-risk patients.
These findings provide a new understanding of immune responses in respiratory infections. If similar nasal antibody responses are confirmed in other respiratory viruses like influenza or RSV, the implications could transform respiratory infection management. Ghosn explained, “If this nasal autoantibody response turns out to be a common mechanism to protect us against other viral infections, it can be a paradigm shift in how we study protective immunity.”
In the future, this research may lead to real-time diagnostic tools that use leftover nasal swab samples to guide COVID-19 treatment. Ben Babcock, a PhD candidate and lead researcher on the study, noted, “Imagine if we could capture the immune response in real-time, right in the clinic. A just-in-time test could give physicians and patients the real-time information they need to make faster, smarter treatment decisions.”