CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (CBS19 NEWS) — UVA health experts will soon figure out what reasons some people suffer from severe cases of COVID-19 and long COVID.
A team of UVA researchers analyzed plasma samples collected from volunteers with moderate or severe COVID-19.
The researchers discovered it with plasma collected in 2018, before the pandemic began.
The effects showed that some patients had antibodies that acted like enzymes, or abzymes, that perform vital functions, such as blood pressure.
“The hope is that if those antibodies that act like enzymes are really the cause of some of those problems, then this is the cause. Then you can scale up a remedy for those antibodies,” said Dr. Steven Zeichner, a professor of pediatrics and microbiology, immunology and cancer biology at UVA.
Zeichner, who is developing a universal vaccine against the coronavirus, hopes that new UVA discoveries will rekindle interest in abzymas in medical research. He also hopes his discovery will lead to better remedies for patients with acute and long COVID-19.