Persistent IgG anticardiolipin autoantibodies are associated with post-COVID syndrome
Daniel Bertin, Elsa Kaphan, Samuel Weber, Benjamin Babacci, Robin Arcani, B. Faucher, Amélie Menard, Alexandre Brodovitch, Jean Louis Mège, Nathalie Bardin
Abstract
Persistence of various symptoms in patients who have recovered from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was recently defined as 'long COVID' or 'post-COVID syndrome' (PCS). This article reports a case of a 58-year-old woman who, although recovering from COVID-19, had novel and persistent symptoms including neurological complications that could not be explained by any cause other than PCS. In addition to a low inflammatory response, persistence of immunoglobulin G anticardiolipin autoantibody positivity and eosinopenia were found 1 year after acute COVID-19 infection, both of which have been defined previously as independent factors associated with the severity of COVID-19. The pathophysiological mechanism of PCS is unknown, but the possibility of persistence of the virus, especially in the nervous system, could be suggested with a post-infectious inflammatory or autoimmune reaction.