IL18RAP and dengue disease: Regarding the potential for confounding in the complex immunological modulation of gene expression during viral infections, we carefully assessed possible confounding factors that could influence the observed differential expression of CXCR1 and IL18RAP. To this end, we investigated the gene expression in the context of dengue severity progression independently of HERV-DEG pairing and performed pathway-level analysis to account for broader immune activation effects.