scholarly journals Zika Virus Causing Encephalomyelitis Associated With Immunoactivation

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Mello Galliez ◽  
Mariana Spitz ◽  
Patricia Piazza Rafful ◽  
Marcelo Cagy ◽  
Claudia Escosteguy ◽  
...  

Abstract Brazil has experienced a Zika virus (ZIKV) outbreak with increased incidence of congenital malformations and neurological manifestations. We describe a case of a 26-year-old Brazilian Caucasian man infected with ZIKV and diagnosed with encephalomyelitis. Brain and spinal cord images showed hyperintense lesions on T2 and fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (FLAIR), and levels of proinflammatory cytokines in the cerebrospinal fluid showed a remarkable increase of interleukin (IL)-6 and IL-8. The observed pattern suggests immune activation during the acute phase, along with the neurological impairment, with normalization in the recovery phase. This is the first longitudinal report of ZIKV infection causing encephalomyelitis with documented immune activation.

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-238
Author(s):  
T. V. Startseva ◽  
N. N. Kanshina ◽  
M. V. Tretyakova ◽  
V. O. Bitsadze ◽  
J. Kh. Khizroeva ◽  
...  

Zika virus (ZIKV) is an arthropod-borne virus (arbovirus) in the genus Flavivirus and the Flaviviridae family. In 1947 and 1948 ZIKV was first isolated from a nonhuman primate as well as from mosquitoes in Africa, respectively. For half a century, ZIKV infections in human were sporadic prior to 2015–2016 pandemic spreading. Transmission of ZIKV from mother to fetus can occur in any trimester of pregnancy, even if mother was an asymptomatic carrier. The clinical signs of ZIKV infection are nonspecific and can be misdiagnosed as some other infectious diseases, especially those caused by arboviruses such as Dengue and Chikungunya. ZIKV infection was solely associated with mild illness prior to the large French Polynesian and Brazil outbreaks, when severe neurological complications, Guillain–Barre syndrome and dramatically increased rate of severe congenital malformations (including microcephaly) were reported. The adaptation of ZIKV to an urban cycle in endemic areas suggests that the incidence of ZIKV infections may be underestimated. The pandemic of novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19) demonstrates that lessons from ZIKV pandemic propagation has not been learned properly.


2017 ◽  
Vol 91 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Morrison ◽  
Michael S. Diamond

ABSTRACT Zika virus (ZIKV) is an emerging mosquito-transmitted flavivirus that now causes epidemics affecting millions of people on multiple continents. The virus has received global attention because of some of its unusual epidemiological and clinical features, including persistent infection in the male reproductive tract and sexual transmission, an ability to cross the placenta during pregnancy and infect the developing fetus to cause congenital malformations, and its association with Guillain-Barré syndrome in adults. This past year has witnessed an intensive effort by the global scientific community to understand the biology of ZIKV and to develop pathogenesis models for the rapid testing of possible countermeasures. Here, we review the recent advances in and utility and limitations of newly developed mouse and nonhuman primate models of ZIKV infection and pathogenesis.


Author(s):  
Maria Fernanda Rios Grassi ◽  
Antônio Carlos Albuquerque Bandeira ◽  
Luana Leandro Gois ◽  
Geraldo Gileno de Sá Oliveira

Since isolation of Zika virus (ZIKV) in Uganda from Zika forest in the 1947, for sixty years the virus has caused only scattered human cases in Africa and Southeast Asia. From 2007, outbreaks with an increasing number of cases, including cases with neurological manifestations, have been occurring in Pacific islands. In 2015, ZIKV reached Brazil with an explosive number of cases and a severe neurological impact on fetuses and newborns. The natural history and several immunological aspects of ZIKV infection need to be characterized. In this review it is summarized the spread of ZIKV around the world and pointed out some gaps on the immunological knowledge related to the infection. The characterization of the immunodominant/protective immune response would contribute to vaccine and diagnosis tests development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-41
Author(s):  
Dipendra Shrestha ◽  
Binod Rajbhandari ◽  
Sushil Krishna Shilpakar

Neural tube defects (NTDs) arethe most common congenital malformations affecting the brain and spinal cord. Furthermore, meningomyelocele (MMC) is said to be one of the commonest NTDs. Multiple MMC is uncommon and bilobed sac is even rarer, comparatively. In literature, only few such cases have been reported. Here, we present a rare case of bilobed thoracic MMC operated successfully in our department.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (46) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Laiton-Donato ◽  
Diego A. Álvarez-Díaz ◽  
Aura Caterine Rengifo ◽  
Orlando Torres-Fernández ◽  
José A. Usme-Ciro ◽  
...  

A Zika virus (ZIKV) strain was isolated from an acute febrile patient during the Zika epidemics in Colombia. The strain was intraperitoneally inoculated into BALB/c mice, and 7 days postinoculation, neurological manifestations and ZIKV infection in the brain were demonstrated. The reported genome sequence is highly related to strains circulating in the Americas.


Author(s):  
Xiaochun Xie ◽  
Jianxiong Zeng

Zika virus (ZIKV), which preferentially targets neural stem and progenitor cells (NSCs) especially in developing brain, is causally associated with fetal microcephaly, intrauterine retardation, and other congenital malformations in humans. However, there are, so far, no effective drugs and vaccines against ZIKV epidemics, warranting an enhanced understanding of ZIKV biology. Immune response is essential for neuronal cells to combat viral invasion. In turn, neurotropic ZIKV has developed a complex strategy of neuroimmune evasion to facilitate viral pathogenesis, especially developmental impairment in embryonic brain. Here, we review not only overall knowledge of ZIKV-related immune responses, but also current advances in our understanding of immune evasion in ZIKV infection. We also review several specific mechanisms underlying ZIKV protein-mediated immune evasion for viral pathogenesis.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui-Yuan Cao ◽  
Yong-fen Xu ◽  
Tian-Hong Zhang ◽  
Jing-Jing Yang ◽  
Ye Yuan ◽  
...  

Abstract Zika virus (ZIKV) infection can be the cause of congenital malformations, including microcephaly in infants and can cause other disorders such as Guillain-Barré syndrome, meningoencephalitis, and myelitis, which can also occur in some infected adults. However, at this time, there is no drug approved to treat ZIKV infection. Drug repurposing is the promptest way to obtain an effective drug during a global public health emergency such as the spread of Zika virus. In this study, we report a US Food and Drug Admistration-approved drug that is safe for pediatric use. Nitazoxanide and its bioactive metabolite, tizoxanide, have anti-ZIKV potential in vitro, and we identified that they exerts antiviral effect possibly by targeting the viral postattachment step.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Farage Ftiha ◽  
Moshe Shalom ◽  
Henry Jradeh

In this review, we focus on summarizing everything that is known about the neurological effects of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2). It has been shown that Coronavirus Disease 2019 (Covid-19) may result in neuromuscular disorders or damage to nerves outside of the brain and spinal cord, which may lead to weakness, numbness, and pain. Published literature has stated that SARS-COV-1 may infect the central nervous system and due to its similarities to SARS-COV-2, we suspect that SARS-COV-2 has the same potential. We conclude that Covid-19 has neurological manifestations. Further research should be done in this field to understand the full extent of this virus.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucia de Noronha ◽  
Camila Zanluca ◽  
Marion Burger ◽  
Andreia Akemi Suzukawa ◽  
Marina Azevedo ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTZika virus (ZIKV) infection in humans has been associated with congenital malformations and other neurological disorders, such as Guillain-Barré syndrome. The mechanism(s) of ZIKV intrauterine transmission, the cell types involved, the most vulnerable period of pregnancy for severe outcomes from infection and other physiopathological aspects remain unknown. In this study, we analyzed placental samples obtained at the time of delivery from a group of twenty-four women diagnosed with ZIKV infection during the first, second or third trimesters of pregnancy. Villous immaturity was the main histological finding in the placental tissues, although placentas without alterations were also frequently observed. Significant enhancement of the number of syncytial sprouts was observed in the placentas of women infected during the third trimester, indicating the development of placental abnormalities after ZIKV infection. Hyperplasia of Hofbauer cells (HCs) was also observed in these third-trimester placental tissues, and remarkably, HCs were the only ZIKV-positive fetal cells found in the placentas studied that persisted until birth, as revealed by immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis. Thirty-three percent of women infected during pregnancy delivered infants with congenital abnormalities, although no pattern correlating the gestational stage at infection, the IHC positivity of HCs in placental tissues and the presence of congenital malformations at birth was observed. Placental tissue analysis enabled us to confirm maternal ZIKV infection in cases where serum from the acute infection phase was not available, which reinforces the importance of this technique in identifying possible causal factors of birth defects. The results we observed in the samples from naturally infected pregnant women may contribute to the understanding of some aspects of the pathophysiology of ZIKV.


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