PubMed ID: 36976812
Author(s): Rosinski JR, Raasch LE, Barros Tiburcio P, Breitbach ME, Shepherd PM, Yamamoto K, Razo E, Krabbe NP, Bliss MI, Richardson AD, Einwalter MA, Weiler AM, Sneed EL, Fuchs KB, Zeng X, Noguchi KK, Morgan TK, Alberts AJ, Antony KM, Kabakov S, Ausderau KK, Bohm EK, Pritchard JC, Spanton RV, Ver Hoove JN, Kim CBY, Nork TM, Katz AW, Rasmussen CA, Hartman A, Mejia A, Basu P, Simmons HA, Eickhoff JC, Friedrich TC, Aliota MT, Mohr EL, Dudley DM, O’Connor DH, Newman CM. Frequent first-trimester pregnancy loss in rhesus macaques infected with African-lineage Zika virus. PLoS Pathog. 2023 Mar 28;19(3):e1011282. doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1011282. eCollection 2023 Mar. PMID 36976812
Journal: P Lo S Pathogens, Volume 19, Issue 3, Mar 2023
In the 2016 Zika virus (ZIKV) pandemic, a previously unrecognized risk of birth defects surfaced in babies whose mothers were infected with Asian-lineage ZIKV during pregnancy. Less is known about the impacts of gestational African-lineage ZIKV infections. Given high human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) burdens in regions where African-lineage ZIKV circulates, we evaluated whether pregnant rhesus macaques infected with simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) have a higher risk of African-lineage ZIKV-associated birth defects. Remarkably, in both SIV+ and SIV- animals, ZIKV infection early in the first trimester caused a high incidence (78%) of spontaneous pregnancy loss within 20 days. These findings suggest a significant risk for early pregnancy loss associated with African-lineage ZIKV infection and provide the first consistent ZIKV-associated phenotype in macaques for testing medical countermeasures.
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