A study identified how children’s immune systems trigger MIS-C by mistaking a understand severe neurological symptoms, as well as the link between viral infections and multiple sclerosis.
“We thought, could there be some sort of trigger with the immune system that leads to MIS-C?” Anderson recalled. “Thanks to Overcoming COVID-19, which our pediatric ICU was part of, we realized there might be enough samples to do PhIP-Seq on kids that had MIS-C and compare their antibodies with kids that had gotten COVID but did not get MIS-C.”
A fingerprint of SARS-CoV-2 at the scene of disease
With the approval of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Randolph sent samples from 199 children with MIS-C to UCSF, along with 45 samples from children who had not developed MIS-C after COVID.
PhIP-Seq revealed that one-third of the MIS-C cases had autoantibodies for an obscure human protein, called SNX8, which is present in certain immune cells that reside throughout the body. For some reason, the immune system was making antibodies targeting itself.
The scientists spent months hunting for a link between these autoantibodies and DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024-07787-1
The work was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (K12-HD000850), National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R01AI154470, 5R01AI154470-03, 2R01AI136514-06, 3P01AI165077-01S1), and Chan Zuckerberg Biohub SF, among others.
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