Other types of fetal cells injected with the virus were unaffected, suggesting that Zika specifically targets the cortex as it is forming.
Advertisement
“Our study shows once the virus gets to the brain it can reach these very important cells” , researcher Hengli Tang, the study’s lead author from Florida State University, said in an interview.
Brazil, the current epicenter of the virus outbreak, has 4,863 suspected and confirmed cases of microcephaly, a birth defect that causes babies to be born with smaller heads and brains. “Now you can be studying the virus in the right cell type, screening your drugs on the right cell type and studying the biology of the right cell type”. In as few as 3 days following exposure to the virus, 90% of the cortical neural progenitor cells in a lab dish had become infected. Induced pluripotent stem cells are made by reprogramming mature cells, and can give rise to any cell type in the body, including cortical neural progenitor cells.
The pathogen appears to attack cells crucial to the developing fetal brain.
There is not now a vaccine for Zika virus. Then the cells’ genetic expression – evidence of which genes were being used by the cells and which weren’t – were analyzed in Peng Jin’s laboratory at Emory University. Furthermore, the genes needed to fight viruses had still not been switched on, which is highly unusual, he adds. Infected human neural progenitor cells were found to release infectious Zika virus particles.
Researchers in Brazil evaluated 88 women who visited a clinic in Rio de Janeiro, 72 of whom had tested positive positive for Zika.
Zika virus has recently emerged as a public health concern, but it was first discovered in Uganda in the 1940s.
Advertisement
The WHO’s Emergency Committee will meet on March 7-9 to review “evolving information” and its recommendations on travel and trade in what is thought to be high season for transmission of the mosquito-borne virus in the southern hemisphere.
