Neurotoxic Amyloidogenic Peptides in the Proteome of SARS-COV2: Potential Implications for Neurological Symptoms in COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 is primarily known as a respiratory disease caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. However, neurological symptoms such as memory loss, sensory confusion, cognitive and psychiatric issues, severe headaches, and even stroke are reported in as many as 30% of cases and can persist even after the infection is over (so-called ‘long COVID’). These neurological symptoms are thought to be caused by brain inflammation, caused by the virus infecting the central nervous system of COVID-19 patients, however we still don’t understand the molecular mechanisms that trigger these symptoms. The neurological effects of COVID-19 share many similarities to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s in which the presence of cytotoxic protein-based amyloid aggregates is a common etiological feature. Following the hypothesis that some neurological symptoms of COVID-19 may also follow an amyloid etiology we performed a bioinformatic scan of the SARS-CoV-2 proteome, detecting peptide fragments that were predicted to be highly amyloidogenic. We selected two of these peptides from the open reading frame 6 (ORF6) and open reading frame 10 (ORF10) proteins. The amyloidogenic virus-derived proteins studied in this work did not include spike (S) protein or any other proteins that have been modified to function as antigens in any current vaccines. We discovered that these ORF protein fragments rapidly self-assemble into amyloid aggregates. Furthermore, these amyloid assemblies were shown to be highly toxic to a neuronal cell line. We introduce and support the idea that cytotoxic amyloid aggregates of SARS-CoV-2 proteins are causing some of the neurological symptoms commonly found in COVID-19 and contributing to long COVID.

Sex differences and immune correlates of Long COVID development, persistence, and resolution

“…/2024 CoV-2-specific (11,12,24,31,(48)(49)(50)(51) and auto-reactive antibody responses (11,(52)(53)(54)(55)(56)(57)(58), human herpesvirus (e.g. Epstein-Barr Virus (EBV)) reactivation (11,12,(59)(60)(61)(62), microvascular and clotting dysfunction (63)(64)(65)(66)(67), thromboinflammation (62), amyloid deposition (63,(68)(69)(70), mitochondrial dysfunction (68,71,72), dysbiosis (73)(74)(75)(76), and hormonal or metabolic abnormalities, such as cortisol (11,12) or serotonin (77) dysregulation. Prior literature on immune dysregulation in LC clinical cohorts have primarily investigated immune cell frequencies, singlecell cytokine production, plasma proteomics, and SARS-CoV-2 antibody responses, with variable results across studies and cohorts (11-15, 17-19, 21-27, 29, 31, 48, 50, 78, 79).…”