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Immune Responses, Viral Infection and Neurodegenerative Diseases

A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Immunology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 August 2026 | Viewed by 602

Special Issue Editors

Department of Neurology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL 60611, USA
Interests: AD; PD; brain virome; viral neuropathogenesis; JCV; PML; JCV; GCN; viral vector

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Guest Editor
Department of Neurology, Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL 60611, USA
Interests: neuro COVID-19; neurodegenerative diseases

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The brain is an important viral reservoir in humans. Viral infections are speculated to be associated with many brain diseases of unknown causes, such as Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and, recently, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and Parkinson’s Disease (PD). These speculations are partially supported by the fact that Amyloid beta, Tau protein, and Alpha Synuclein are all important innate immunity responders, and have gained more attention following the publication of our findings that Human Pegivirus has a significantly higher prevalence in the brains of PD patients compared to controls. Investigations exploring the interaction between immune responses (including innate immunity) and brain viral infections can help to better understand the viral neuropathogenesis that may lead to the development of a model or medicine for the infection.

This Special Issue focuses on recent studies aiming to advance our understanding of the interaction between immune responses and brain viral infections in MS and neurodegenerative diseases like AD and PD, as well as other brain diseases. Submissions are welcomed relating to clinical or pure models with biomolecular experiments, as well as those that explore the interaction between immune responses (including innate immunity) and brain viral infections, in addition to diagnostic biomarkers of brain viral infections.

Dr. Xin Dang
Dr. Barbara Hanson
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • immune response
  • innate immunity
  • viral neuropathogenesis
  • viral biomarker
  • AD
  • PD
  • neurodegenerative diseases

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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13 pages, 939 KB  
Article
Predictive Utility of ViroFind Detection of Blood and CSF Virome for Viral Presence in Human Brain Tissue
by Xin Dang, Barbara A. Hanson, Melissa Lopez, Janet Miller, Millenia Jimenez and Igor J. Koralnik
Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2026, 27(6), 2789; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms27062789 - 19 Mar 2026
Viewed by 336
Abstract
Viral presence in the brain may contribute to chronic neurologic diseases. However, investigating these associations is limited by the difficulty of directly sampling brain tissue in living individuals. Here, we evaluated whether peripheral viral detection using unbiased target-enrichment next-generation sequencing could inform viral [...] Read more.
Viral presence in the brain may contribute to chronic neurologic diseases. However, investigating these associations is limited by the difficulty of directly sampling brain tissue in living individuals. Here, we evaluated whether peripheral viral detection using unbiased target-enrichment next-generation sequencing could inform viral presence in the brain across a diverse set of viral taxa. We applied ViroFind to matched brain, blood (peripheral blood mononuclear cells, spleen, and/or lymph node), and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) to assess the predictive utility of viral detection in blood and CSF for identifying viral presence in brain samples obtained from the National NeuroAIDS Tissue Consortium, including both HIV-infected (HIV+) and HIV-uninfected (HIV) individuals without known active viral infection of the brain. Blood negativity was generally more informative for predicting the absence of viruses in the brain than blood positivity for predicting viral presence. CSF viral detection demonstrated limited predictive utility for brain presence across most viral taxa examined. Among blood+ individuals, viral burden differed significantly between brain+ and brain cases for Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), parvovirus, and torque teno virus (TTV). Blood viral burden showed moderate ability to distinguish brain+ from brain cases for EBV and parvovirus, and strong discriminatory ability for TTV, with similar decision thresholds across HIV+ and HIV individuals. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Immune Responses, Viral Infection and Neurodegenerative Diseases)
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