GeNeuro SA announced, in collaboration with Professor Marion Leboyer from the FondaMental Foundation, and Dr Ryad Tamouza, head immunologist for the immuno-psychiatry team, the publication in the leading scientific publication Translational Psychiatry of a new study showing that over 80% of the patients hospitalized in a psychiatry department near Paris during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2, i.e., 1.6 times more than for the control group. 27% of patients with non-vaccinal SARS-COV-2 positive serology corresponded to the previously described mental disorder subgroup associating HERV-W expression. These results are confronted to those of a recent study has shown showing that the SARS-CoV- 2 virus causing COVID-19 can trigger the activation of the HERV-Wretrovirus, which may result in post-infectious syndromes or diseases associated with persistent HERV-W ENV expression in genetically predisposed individuals.

Several specific factors explaining asymptomatic or unrecorded COVID-19 in these in-patients, hospitalized in the Psychiatry Department of the Creteil-Paris VII university hospital in France have also been suggested. The authors conclude that this now well defined subgroup of inflammatory psychoses calls for the development of a differential therapeutic approach in psychoses and more specifically through the identification and development of further HERV-related precision medicine therapies. Preliminary results of this study were presented in 2022 at the Schizophrenia International Research Society (SIRS) Conference, in Florence, Italy, in the dedicated session on HERVs and psychoses chaired by Prof. Robert Yolken (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA).