Corley said the NEIDL Zika research team so far consists of about eight scientists from Boston University, who specialize in fields from obstetrics and gynecology to animal modeling.
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The researchers, working in the laboratory, determined the Zika virus selectively infects cells in the brain’s cortex, or outer layer, making those cells “more likely to die and less likely to divide normally and make new brain cells”, according to a press release from the journal.
“The take-home message is that this is another important addition to the growing evidence that seems to now be quite compelling of the relationship between infection of pregnant women and the development of congenital abnormalities”, says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
There’s no evidence that the cells are employing antiviral responses, which means we don’t know whether or how the virus is being cleared from the precursor cells, said Ming, a neuroscientist interested in brain disorders like microcephaly. None of the Zika-negative women’s ultrasounds found any problems.
And the virus may pose a threat not just in the first trimester, but throughout a woman’s pregnancy.
Two were born undersized, while a third was born at normal weight but with severe microcephaly, including eye lesions that could indicate blindness.
Much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly.
The next step will be to determine how exactly the virus moves from the mother to the fetus, to better determine how to treat and prevent the defect, Corley said.
“Unfortunately, we still have many unanswered questions”, said Dr. Christopher M. Zahn of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. But he stressed that his study does not prove that Zika causes microcephaly, nor that it works by that route.
Zhexing Wen, one of the researchers at Johns Hopkins, said the virus has an affinity for attacking neural progenitor cells as opposed to other cells.
Florida State University researcher Hengli Tang, the study’s lead author, said the study suggests the virus would be capable of doing the damage seen in microcephaly.
“Studies of foetuses and babies with the telltale small brains and heads of microcephaly in Zika-affected areas have found abnormalities in the cortex, and Zika virus has been found in the foetal tissue”, he said in a statement.
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One concerning discovery was that the cells that Zika infected became factories for viral replication.
