PLoS Pathogens (Mar 2023)

Frequent first-trimester pregnancy loss in rhesus macaques infected with African-lineage Zika virus.

  • Jenna R Rosinski,
  • Lauren E Raasch,
  • Patrick Barros Tiburcio,
  • Meghan E Breitbach,
  • Phoenix M Shepherd,
  • Keisuke Yamamoto,
  • Elaina Razo,
  • Nicholas P Krabbe,
  • Mason I Bliss,
  • Alexander D Richardson,
  • Morgan A Einwalter,
  • Andrea M Weiler,
  • Emily L Sneed,
  • Kerri B Fuchs,
  • Xiankun Zeng,
  • Kevin K Noguchi,
  • Terry K Morgan,
  • Alexandra J Alberts,
  • Kathleen M Antony,
  • Sabrina Kabakov,
  • Karla K Ausderau,
  • Ellie K Bohm,
  • Julia C Pritchard,
  • Rachel V Spanton,
  • James N Ver Hoove,
  • Charlene B Y Kim,
  • T Michael Nork,
  • Alex W Katz,
  • Carol A Rasmussen,
  • Amy Hartman,
  • Andres Mejia,
  • Puja Basu,
  • Heather A Simmons,
  • Jens C Eickhoff,
  • Thomas C Friedrich,
  • Matthew T Aliota,
  • Emma L Mohr,
  • Dawn M Dudley,
  • David H O'Connor,
  • Christina M Newman

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.ppat.1011282
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 19, no. 3
p. e1011282

Abstract

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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.