A study on the transcriptional characteristics of novel HERV gene in the blood of children with Kawasaki disease and its correlation with the disease

Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs), integral to the human genome, are implicated in autoimmune diseases through superantigen-mediated vascular inflammation. This study examined NCBI next-generation sequencing blood transcriptome data from 62 pairs of children with acute Kawasaki disease (KD) and healthy controls. Bioinformatics analysis identified differentially expressed HERV gene sequences (|Log 2 FC| > 0.58, FDR < 0.05), revealing 825 and 5,751 distinct HERV transcriptional variations across two KD data sets ( PRJNA271099 and PRJNA739210 ). Novel HERVs were defined by amino acid sequence similarity of <90%. HERV-K-2177 and HERV-K-3157 demonstrated 70.27% and 56.06% protein-level similarity to known HERVs, respectively. Validation with real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR on blood samples from 18 patients with KD and 10 healthy controls showed significantly elevated expression of HERV-K-2177 and HERV-K18 mRNA in patients with KD ( P < 0.05). Phylogenetic analysis placed HERV-K-2177 and HERV-K-3157 within the HERV-K family, though at the peripheral cluster, indicating their potential as novel HERV species. These results suggest a possible association between HERV-K-2177 transcriptional expression and KD. IMPORTANCE Human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs) are intricate retroviruses passed down through the human genome. This study identified two novel HERVs in the blood transcriptome of children with Kawasaki disease and conducted preliminary experiments to explore the correlation between HERVs and the disease. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that these viruses may represent potential new HERV species. These findings suggest a potential association between HERV transcript expression and Kawasaki disease.