"Unwanted antibodies after viral infections can be washed out very effectively with apheresis."
Quote Prof. Prüß of the Charité Berlin
Passive vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) can be used in acute corona diseases or for a short period as a precaution. In contrast to active vaccines, where the vaccine protection must first build up, these vaccines take effect immediately, but are also decreasing more quickly.
They consist of antibodies that dock onto the virus cells in infected bodies so that they cannot penetrate healthy body cells. Docking also marks the invader so that immune cells can identify and eliminate the invader. Infected individuals then usually became only a mild course of the disease.
The team of Dr Harald Prüß, research group leader at the German Centre for Neurodegenerative Diseases e. V. (DZNE) and senior physician at the Clinic for Neurology with Experimental Neurology at the Charité, isolated more than 600 antibodies from recovered people and tested them for their effectiveness against the coronavirus. However, some of the particularly effective antibodies specifically attached themselves to proteins of the brain, heart muscle and blood vessels. In further research, these malformed so-called autoimmune antibodies were found to be causative for a variety of brain diseases that can lead to autoimmune brain inflammation and, in the further course, to autoimmune neurodegeneration, autoimmune dementia, such as Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, Alzheimer's disease.
SARS Cov2 is not the first viral disease in which it has been found how secondary autoantibodies can lead to brain inflammation.
List of viral diseases that lead to brain inflammation (encephalitis):
- SARS-CoV-2
- Epstein-Barr virus (Pfeiffer glandular fever, also called mononucleosis)
- Chickenpox or shingles (varicella viruses)
- Hepatitis viruses
- HIV
- Japan encephalitis
- Herpes type 6
- Influenza (the real flu)
(In descending order, influenza is only1/2-1/3 as likely to subsequently cause dementia or psychiatric illness compared to COVID-19).
Unfortunately, the diagnosis of brain inflammation is difficult, especially in the early stages, and can only be detected with a special MRI scan.
Typical long covid symptoms with suspected autoimmune brain disease include memory impairment, fatigue syndrome, sleep disturbances, headache, fever, muscle pain and sometimes anxiety and depression.
For treatment, apheresis has proven to be the gentlest and most effective method, before the administration of drugs such as steroids, immunoglobulins and rituximab. The methods plasmapheresis (exchange of blood plasma) and immunoadsorption (as we use it in the BIOLOGICUM+ with the INUSpherese® apheresis) are explicitly recommended by the neurology department of the Charité in such cases. The earlier apheresis therapy begins, the more promising it is.
Overall, a growing number of dementia-causing antibodies are being identified. Apheresis is therapeutically one of the first line procedures for this diagnosis.
More informations (german language): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHQCUkAtcLU
(Prof. Harald Prüß "How antibodies can disturb the psyche and memory" 12.04.21, video 38min)