{"doi":"10.1172/jci.insight.166540","title":"Evidence of a Sjögren’s disease–like phenotype following COVID-19 in mice and humans","abstract":"Sjögren's Disease (SjD) is a systemic autoimmune disease characterized by lymphocytic inflammation of the lacrimal and salivary glands (SG), dry eyes and mouth, and systemic symptoms. SARS-CoV-2 may trigger the development or progression of autoimmune diseases. To test this, we used a mouse model of SARS-CoV-2 infection and convalescent patients' blood and SG in order to understand the development of SjD-like autoimmunity after infection. First, SARS-CoV-2-infected human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) transgenic mice exhibited decreased salivation, elevated antinuclear antibodies (ANA), and lymphocytic infiltration in the lacrimal and SG. The sera from patients with COVID-19 sera showed increased ANA (i.e., anti-SSA [Sjögren's-syndrome-related antigen A]/anti-Ro52 and anti-SSB [SS-antigen B]/anti-La). Male patients showed elevated anti-SSA compared with female patients, and female patients exhibited diverse ANA patterns. SG biopsies from convalescent COVID-19 patients were microscopically similar to SjD SG with focal lymphocytic infiltrates in 4 of 6 patients and 2 of 6 patients exhibiting focus scores of at least 2. Lastly, monoclonal antibodies produced in recovered patients blocked ACE2/spike interaction and cross-reacted with nuclear antigens. Our study shows a direct association between SARS-CoV-2 and SjD. Hallmark features of SjD-affected SGs were histologically indistinguishable from convalescent COVID-19 patients. The results implicate that SARS-CoV-2 could be an environmental trigger for SjD.","journal":"JCI Insight","year":2023,"id":337596,"datarank":0.4493598410330987,"base_score":2.995732273553991,"endowment":2.995732273553991,"self_citation_contribution":0.4493598410330987,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.4493598410330987,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":19,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9573,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2023-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":509797,"name":"Alexandria Voigt","orcid":"0000-0001-5703-9190","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":987137,"name":"Laura Goranova","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":987138,"name":"Mehdi Abed","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":225662,"name":"David E. Kleiner","orcid":"0000-0003-3442-4453","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":551790,"name":"José O. Maldonado","orcid":"0000-0003-1226-7119","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553034,"name":"Margaret Beach","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":553035,"name":"Eileen Pelayo","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":242306,"name":"John A. Chiorini","orcid":"0000-0003-4919-4056","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":986663,"name":"William F. Craft","orcid":"0000-0002-6799-536X","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":34148,"name":"David A. Ostrov","orcid":"0000-0002-4696-875X","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":987139,"name":"Vijay Ramiya","orcid":null,"position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":986664,"name":"Sukesh Sukumaran","orcid":"0000-0003-1571-8384","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":34150,"name":"Ashley N. Brown","orcid":"0000-0001-9993-5241","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":936649,"name":"Kaley C. Hanrahan","orcid":null,"position":14,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":482803,"name":"Apichai Tuanyok","orcid":"0000-0002-3380-0448","position":15,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":298802,"name":"Blake M. Warner","orcid":"0000-0002-4961-018X","position":16,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":459725,"name":"Cuong Q. Nguyen","orcid":"0000-0001-5633-4075","position":17,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":820415,"name":"Yiran Shen","orcid":"0000-0002-4220-6862","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":51,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T01:10:31.133446Z","pmid":"37676726","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}