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 Fuchs, Xiankun Zeng, Kazuma Noguchi, Terry K. Morgan, Alexandra J. Alberts, Kathleen M. Antony, Sabrina Kabakov, Karla 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, Andrés Mejía, 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
Abstract
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.