Pathogenic priming likely contributes to serious and critical illness and mortality in COVID-19 via autoimmunity

“Highlights: The list of viral/human protein matches… indicates which epitopes might be responsible for autoimmunological pathogenic priming due to prior infection or following exposure to SARS-CoV-2 or relatives following vaccination. These epitopes should be excluded from vaccines under development to minimize autoimmunity due to risk of pathogenic priming…

Discussion: … The fact that pathogenic priming may be occurring involving autoimmunity against multiple proteins following CoV vaccination is consistent with other observations observed during autoimmunity, including the release of proinflammatory cytokines and cytokine storm. Similar to the SARS-CoV animal studies [6], found that mice vaccinated against MERS-CoV (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) development exaggerated pulmonary immunopathology when challenged with the MERS virus following vaccination.”