Immunologic and virological correlates of long COVID: A bedside to bench approach

Long COVID is a largely unexplored disease spectrum of unknown etiology with need to gain rapid insights into the etiology to improve diagnosis and treatment options.

Long COVID could result from a number of factors including i) the induction of reactive autoimmune responses as a consequence of cross-reactivity with viral antigens and/or ii) viral persistence and concomitant ongoing immune activation.

As such, we here hypothesize that differential clinical syndromes will segregate with distinct immunologic and/or virologic parameters/phenotypes.

Longitudinal samples (blood and tissues/fluid) will be collected from both long COVID patients and convalescent controls at the new Karolinska Huddinge postcovid clinic.

Our interdisciplinary team of clinicians and researchers will create a biobank and data pool by combining a detailed history and examination of all patients with virological and immunologic analyses, including next-generation measurements of inflammatory cytokines, autoantibodies, immune activation profiles and adaptive immunity to SARS-CoV-2, and direct measurements of viral titers in nasopharyngeal fluid, saliva, stool, BAL and cerebrospinal fluid.

Also, prognostic facctors, morbidity and mortality of long Covid in clinical cohorts and national regsiter cohorts will be analyzed.

These studies will enable the identification and prospective testing of potential biomarkers, which in turn will inform the development of new diagnostic tests and treatments for long COVID.