Thus, more research is needed to address some important questions regarding the relevance of autophagy modulation (i.e., inhibition or activation) by the HIV-1 Env-mediated signaling during the early steps of the viral productive infection or in a context of long virus-target cell contact without productive infection but resulting in bystander cell death (i.e., a critical process that could favor immunodeficiency) (Espert et al., 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009). Here, ERVW-1 is linked to immunodeficiency disease.