Study finds key link in rare blood disease

New research led by Flinders University and international experts is expanding understanding of vaccine-induced immune thrombocytopenia and thrombosis (known as VITT). At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021,VITT emerged as a new disease following adenovirus vector-based vaccines – notably the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, used in Australia. VITT was found to be caused by an unusually dangerous blood autoantibody directed against a protein termed platelet factor 4 (or PF4). In separate research in 2023, researchers from Canada, North America, Germany and Italy described a virtually identical disorder with the same PF4 antibody that was fatal in some cases after natural adenovirus (common cold) infection. Flinders University researchers Dr Jing Jing Wang and Flinders Professor Tom Gordon, Head of Immunology at SA Pathology in South Australia, led a previous study in 2022 which cracked the molecular code of the PF4 antibody and identified a genetic risk factor related to an antibody gene termed IGLV3.21*02. Now, the Flinders...