Project

Severe COVID-19 and the high prevalence of its long-term complications have become a major global health challenge. According to the World Health Organization, Post COVID-19 condition refers to a wide range of medium and long-term effects that may persist after the acute infection, presenting with heterogeneous clinical symptoms such as fatigue, respiratory difficulties, cognitive impairments, sleep disturbances, persistent cough, chest pain, muscle aches, loss of smell or taste, and psychological manifestations including anxiety and depression. These prolonged conditions may stem from persistent inflammation and from the still-uncertain possibility that SARS-CoV-2 may remain in hidden reservoirs within the body long after the primary infection has resolved.

The HERVCOV project aims to analyze the role of human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs), known for their high pro-inflammatory potential, in the immunopathogenesis of COVID-19 and to identify and evaluate a set of biomarkers which will be important for the diagnosis, prognosis and follow-up of COVID-19 patients and their prioritization for targeted therapy. Recent data from the consortium have demonstrated that the HERV-W envelope protein is highly expressed in lymphocytes of COVID-19 patients and correlates with inflammatory markers and respiratory outcome of the disease, strongly suggesting the involvement of HERVs in COVID-19 pathogenesis. Building on this evidence, the project will investigate the biological pathways and functions that link HERV expression and activation to the development of severe COVID-19 forms and related complications. This will involve an integrated analysis of biomarkers based on HERV pathogenic protein activation, SARS-CoV-2-specific immune responses, cytokine production and standard medical blood parameters used for clinical monitoring. These biomarkers will be evaluated across different clinical presentations of the disease – including acute, post-COVID, neuro-COVID and long-COVID patients – to identify parameters that can predict the clinical course and the aggravation of SARS-CoV-2-induced symptoms