SARS-CoV-2 awakens ancient retroviral genes and the expression of proinflammatory HERV-W envelope protein in COVID-19 patients, 2023, Charvet et al.

At this point it's still a preprint.

Abstract:

As most of you know, in the 80s researchers were excited about several (and separate) finds of retroviral activity in what we now call ME/CFS patients. The main researcher was Elaine DeFreitas, whose finds got dismissed by UK reserachers Behan and Gow as finding only "harmless" endogenous retrovirus.

DeFreitas insisted that they had been sloppy and didn't replicate her lab methods properly.

Either way, retroviral activity was undeniably present, and under certain circumstances endogenous retrovirus appears not to be harmless at all.

According to a quick wikipedia search:


Neurology, immunity, cancer: same cluster of stuff as where ME/CFS can be found. I was stricken by the presence of both multiple sclerosis (MS) and schizophrenia, as these are àlso associated with Epstein Barr virus (EBV), just as ME/CFS and Long COVID are.


If I hadn't coïncidentally been reminded of the 80s retroviral finds being dismissed as endogenous yesterday in Osler's web (because I was trying to find something else), I might have missed the connection.


https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.01.18.21266111v2

 

Two twitter threads about the paper:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1491169257639788546


and

https://twitter.com/user/status/1491172452432777216

 

If it turns out to be a major factor in ME/CFS, then "zombie virus" is accurate on multiple levels

https://twitter.com/user/status/1491221953830879234


Also, there was a study with similar finds published in the Lancet:

https://twitter.com/user/status/1491182935068016640


Link to study: Evidence of the pathogenic HERV-W envelope expression in T lymphocytes in association with the respiratory outcome of COVID-19 patients - eBioMedicine (thelancet.com)

 

Thanks @Cheshire /mod team for adding the link to the actual paper!

I had retrieved it, but I'm unfortunately having very increased scatterbrain atm, really glad you added it for me.

 

Merged thread - final paper

SARS-CoV-2 awakens ancient retroviral genes and the expression of proinflammatory HERV-W envelope protein in COVID-19 patients
Benjamin Charvet; Joanna Brunel; Justine Pierquin; Mathieu Iampietro; Didier Decimo; Nelly Queruel; Alexandre Lucas; María del Mar Encabo-Berzosa; Izaskun Arenaz; Tania Perez Marmolejo; Arturo Ivan Gonzalez; Armando Castorena Maldonado; Cyrille Mathieu; Patrick Küry; Jose Flores-Rivera; Fernanda Torres-Ruiz; Santiago Avila-Rios; Gonzalo Salgado Montes de Oca; Jon Schoorlemmer; Hervé Perron; Branka Horvat

Patients with COVID-19 may develop abnormal inflammatory response, followed in some cases by severe disease and long-lasting syndromes. We show here that in vitro exposure to SARS-CoV-2 activates the expression of the human endogenous retrovirus (HERV) HERV-W proinflammatory envelope protein (ENV) in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from a subset of healthy donors, in ACE2 receptor and infection-independent manner.

Plasma and/or sera of 221 COVID-19 patients from different cohorts, infected with successive SARS-CoV-2 variants including the Omicron, had detectable HERV-W ENV, which correlated with ENV expression in T-lymphocytes and peaked with the disease severity. HERV-W ENV was also found in post-mortem tissues of lungs, heart, gastrointestinal tract, brain olfactory bulb and nasal mucosa from COVID-19 patients.

Altogether, these results demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 could induce HERV-W envelope protein expression and suggest its involvement in the immunopathogenesis of certain COVID-19-associated syndromes and thereby its relevance in the development of personalized treatment of patients.

Link | PDF (Cell/iScience)

 

"Affiliations
GeNeuro Innovation"

https://www.geneuro.com/en/technologies/rationale

"Stopping the progression of autoimmune diseases

GeNeuro is pursuing a novel approach for treating autoimmune diseases by seeking to block mechanisms suspected of participating to their onset and development. This approach is the result of 30 years of research into human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs), including 15 years within the Institut Mérieux group and INSERM, before GeNeuro was founded in 2006."