Sequence similarity between SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid and multiple sclerosis-associated proteins provides insight into viral neuropathogenesis following infection.

The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 continues to cause death and disease throughout the world, underscoring the necessity of understanding the virus and host immune response. From the start of the pandemic, a prominent pattern of central nervous system (CNS) pathologies, including demyelination, has emerged, suggesting an underlying mechanism of viral mimicry to CNS proteins. We hypothesized that immunodominant epitopes of SARS-CoV-2 share homology with proteins associated with multiple sclerosis (MS). Using PEPMatch, a newly developed bioinformatics package which predicts peptide similarity within specific amino acid mismatching parameters consistent with published MHC binding capacity, we discovered that nucleocapsid protein shares significant overlap with 22 MS-associated proteins, including myelin proteolipid protein (PLP). Further computational evaluation demonstrated that this overlap may have critical implications for T cell responses in MS patients and is likely unique to SARS-CoV-2 among the major human coronaviruses. Our findings substantiate the hypothesis of viral molecular mimicry in the pathogenesis of MS and warrant further experimental exploration.

Toward Understanding COVID-19 Recovery: National Institutes of Health Workshop on Postacute COVID-19.

Over the past year, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has swept the globe, resulting in an enormous worldwide burden of infection and mortality. However, the additional toll resulting from long-term consequences of the pandemic has yet to be tallied. Heterogeneous disease manifestations and syndromes are now recognized among some persons after their initial recovery from SARS-CoV-2 infection, representing in the broadest sense a failure to return to a baseline state of health after acute SARS-CoV-2 infection. On 3 to 4 December 2020, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, in collaboration with other Institutes and Centers of the National Institutes of Health, convened a virtual workshop to summarize existing knowledge on postacute COVID-19 and to identify key knowledge gaps regarding this condition.