A research team came together at University of Arkansas Medical Center (UAMS) with a shared interest in finding out what was causing long COVID-19 symptoms. They discovered that there is an antibody in patients that have had a COVID-19 infection that could be related to the symptoms with long-haul COVID-19. The antibody shows up weeks after the initial infection and creates problems for the immune system by attacking the enzyme that helps to regulate the body's response to COVID-19. In effect, the body may be attacking itself even after the virus is gone. The good news is that if they are right about this antibody being the cause of the long-COVID-19 symptoms, there are some commercially available drugs that may help with this. If we can find the mechanism and find a way to treat it, that's going to be a tremendous improvement for a lot of people in terms of the quality of their lives, said Dr. John Arthur, who was involved with the study.