Topic: C57BL6/J mice

Environmental enrichment (EE) is a husbandry procedure known to provide enhanced somatosensory, locomotor and cognitive stimulation. It has been shown to exert significant beneficial effects on cognitive function improving rodent behavior, altering neuronal plasticity, and promoting stress resilience. Concurrently, emerging research highlights the intricate bidirectional communication between the gut microbiome and central nervous system, known as the microbiota-gut-brain axis. Therefore, the aim of this work is to investigate, whether the beneficial effects of EE are linked to alterations in

Between 15% and 30% of SARS-CoV-2-infected people still experience neurological symptoms (memory impairment, attention deficits, pain) more than 4 months after the onset of COVID-19. This condition, long-neuro-COVID, is poorly understood and might be explained by a persisting autoimmune response against nervous-derived self-antigens. This study aims to determine whether IgG autoantibodies from long-COVID patients can bind to central and peripheral nervous system epitopes and reproduce neuropsychiatric symptoms upon transfer into mice. Long-COVID patients meeting the consensus WHO definition we