"Abstract
Immune hyperactivation has been linked to various vaccines. We present a potential association of new-onset systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) post-COVID-19 immunization. The patient is a 54-year-old male admitted for evaluation of flu-like symptoms two weeks after receiving the second dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Physical examination revealed high-grade fever, diffuse bilateral non-tender cervical lymphadenopathy, and erythematous maculopapular palpable purpuric lesions on bilateral feet. Laboratory evaluation showed a significant hypocomplementemia (C3 < 11 mg/dL, C4 < 3 mg/dL, and CH50 < 10 U/mL), high titer antinuclear antibody, anti-dsDNA antibodies, anti-Sjogren’s syndrome-related antigen A antibodies, anti-Sjogren’s syndrome-related antigen B antibodies, anti-Smith antibodies, anti-ribonucleoprotein antibodies, anti-histone antibodies with a negative malignancy, and infection workup. The patient was treated with a high dose of steroids with a positive response...
Discussion
... Given the negative infectious and malignancy workup, a temporal relationship with COVID-19 vaccination, the biological plausibility of the vaccines causing autoimmunity, and clinical characteristics, the COVID-19 vaccine was considered as a possible trigger for the evolution of SLE in our patient... This report illustrates that... rare disease flares or evolution to a new autoimmune disease can be triggered."
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Kaur et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License CC-BY 4.0., which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.