{"id":12394,"date":"2017-05-28T08:06:09","date_gmt":"2017-05-28T08:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=12394"},"modified":"2017-05-28T08:06:09","modified_gmt":"2017-05-28T08:06:09","slug":"zika-infections-factor-pregnancies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/zika-infections-factor-pregnancies\/","title":{"rendered":"Zika infections could be factor in more pregnancies"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In a UW\u2013Madison lab, a vacuum tube holds a blood-fed strain of Aedes aegypti mosquito, which can carry the Zika virus. New research suggests the virus poses a wider threat in human pregnancies than generally appreciated. PHOTO: JEFF MILLER<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Zika virus infection passes efficiently from a pregnant monkey to its fetus, spreading inflammatory damage throughout the tissues that support the fetus and its developing nervous system \u2014 suggesting the virus poses a wider threat in human pregnancies than generally appreciated, University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison scientists have found.<\/span><\/p>\n

The UW\u2013Madison researchers, along with collaborators at Duke University and the University of California, Davis, published their study of Zika-infected pregnancies today in the journal<\/span> PLOS Pathogens<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Their work, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health, followed the pregnancies from infection in the first or third trimester, regularly assessing maternal infection and fetal development and examining the extent of infection in the fetus when the pregnancies reached term.<\/span><\/p>\n

The UW researchers infected four pregnant rhesus macaque monkeys at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center with a Zika virus dose similar to what would be transferred by a mosquito bite, and found evidence that the virus was present in each monkey\u2019s fetus.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat is a very high level \u2014 100 percent exposure \u2014 of the virus to the fetus along with inflammation and tissue injury in an animal model that mirrors the infection in human pregnancies quite closely,\u201d says Ted Golos<\/a>, a UW\u2013Madison reproductive physiologist and professor of comparative biosciences and obstetrics and gynecology. \u201cIt\u2019s sobering. If microcephaly is the tip of the iceberg for babies infected in pregnancy, the rest of the iceberg may be bigger than we\u2019ve imagined.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Three of the fetuses involved had small heads, but not quite so small relative to normal that they would meet the human standard for diagnosing microcephaly \u2014 the most striking and widely discussed result of Zika infection since Brazilian doctors raised alarm in 2014 of many babies with arrested brain development.<\/span><\/p>\n

The new study did not find abnormal brain development, but the researchers did discover unusual inflammation in the fetal eyes, in the retinas and optic nerves, in pregnancies infected during the first trimester.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur eyes are basically part of our central nervous system. The optic nerve grows right out from the fetal brain during pregnancy,\u201d says<\/span> Kathleen Antony<\/a>, a UW\u2013Madison professor of maternal fetal medicine and an author of the study. \u201cSo it makes some sense to see this damage in the monkeys and in human pregnancy \u2014 problems such as chorioretinal atrophy or microphthalmia in which the whole eye or parts of the eye just don\u2019t grow to the expected size.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The similarities between the monkey pregnancies and reported complications in Zika-affected human pregnancies further establish Zika infection in monkeys as a way to study the progression of the infection and associated health problems in people.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere are so many things about Zika infection we can\u2019t study as well in pregnant humans \u2014 or fast enough to make a difference for a lot of people who may be infected,\u201d says Dawn Dudley, a UW\u2013Madison pathology research scientist and one of the lead authors of the new research with Antony and obstetrics and gynecology graduate student Sydney Nguyen.<\/span><\/p>\n

An animal model opens the door to studying how Zika infection interacts with other infections (like dengue virus), how the effects of early pregnancy infection might be different from later infection, and, according to Dudley, whether quick treatment with some antiviral therapies could manage the damage of what has come to be known as congenital Zika syndrome.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe precise pathway that the virus takes from mom\u2019s bloodstream to the fetal bloodstream, across that interface, cannot be studied except in an animal model,\u201d says Golos, whose research group found damage from Zika infection in every part of the interface between mother and fetus \u2014 the placenta, amniotic fluid in the womb and the lining of uterus.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the immediate effects may not be as dramatic as microcephaly, \u201cthe results we\u2019re seeing in monkey pregnancies make us think that, as they grow, more human babies might develop Zika-related disease pathology than is currently appreciated,\u201d Golos says.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Zika virus infection passes efficiently from a pregnant monkey to its fetus, spreading inflammatory damage throughout the tissues that support the fetus and its developing nervous system \u2014 suggesting the virus poses a wider threat in human pregnancies than generally appreciated, University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison scientists have found. The UW\u2013Madison researchers, along with collaborators at Duke […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":12395,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-medicine","category-research"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",775,516,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516-768x511.jpg",750,499,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",750,499,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",775,516,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",775,516,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",775,516,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",775,516,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",600,399,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",600,399,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",736,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",541,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",95,63,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",640,426,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",96,64,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/Aliota_mosquito16_4933-775x516.jpg",150,100,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"Medicine<\/a> Research<\/a>","tag_info":"Research","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}