Zika circulates among the wild animals of the Americas

Credit: John Tann, Flickr

A group of researchers from the Medical Branch of the University of Texas at Galveston and the Medical School of Sao Jose do Rio in Brazil is the first to report that wild monkeys from the Americas are transmitting the Zika virus to the US. man via mosquitoes, thus allowing a complete eradication of the virus in the Americas very improbable. The document is currently available in Scientific reports.

"Our discoveries are important because they are changing our understanding of the ecology and transmission of the Zika virus in the Americas," said lead author Nikos Vasilakis, a professor in the department of pathology at UTMB. . "The possibility of a natural transmission cycle involving local mosquitoes and wild local primates as a reservoir and host of amplification will certainly have an impact on our predictions of new outbreaks in the Americas because we can not not eradicate this cycle of natural transmission. "

Vasilakis said that, as has shown yellow fever, outbreaks in animals will still be a source of epidemics in humans, even after the establishment of a possible control and elimination of urban transmission through vaccination and treatment.

In two Brazilian cities, the research team identified carcbades of wild nonhuman primates tested positive for the American Zika virus lineage. To learn more about Zika infection in these animals, the researchers infected four primates with the Zika virus of the American lineage in the laboratory. Monkeys maintained their viral levels over time, suggesting that non-human primates could be a vertebrate host for maintaining transmission and circulation of Zika virus in urban tropical communities.

"This is a game-changer for people involved in disease control, including vaccine designers, public health officials and policy makers," said lead author Mauricio Lacerda Nogueira, a professor at the Faculty of Medicine. Medicine of Sao Jose do Rio in Brazil. "This work also underscores the value of the long-standing collaboration between the São José do Rio Preto School of Medicine and the UTMB, as well as the crucial importance of our respective funding agencies, the National Institutes of Medicine. Health and the Sao Paulo Research Foundation in Brazil, which recognized the importance of this issue from the beginning. "

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