There is a question that sits underneath much of the PoTS, ME/CFS and Long COVID research literature, rarely stated directly but increasingly difficult to ignore. What if part of what is happening in these conditions is that the immune system has produced antibodies against the very receptors the autonomic nervous system uses to regulate the body?
The answer, from a growing body of evidence across multiple research groups in multiple countries, is that in a meaningful subset of patients, that is exactly what is happening. This piece decodes what these autoantibodies are, what they do, what the evidence says about their role in PoTS, Long COVID and ME/CFS and crucially what happens when you remove them.
