News

The main focus of our group has been the optimisation of the current algorithm for testing pregnant women and their infants recruited in the ZIKAction studies. We started recruitment in Jamaica which is exciting and in order to answer the questions around vertical transmission in symptomatic and asymptomatic women at a given site and at a given time we were faced with challenging dilemmas around the optimal sampling protocol and importantly the optimal testing strategy for arbovirus infections (Zika, dengue and chikungunya).

Information nowadays is the most precious element for the success of any activity as we all know. In order to optimize the activities of ZIKAction in Brazil, the project management team organized a Brazilian counterpart led by me, Daniel Lang, and including local project managers Ana Carolina Gomes and Heloisa Setta.

The ZIKAction vertical transmission study primarily seeks to identify birth outcomes for pregnant women infected with Zika, dengue or chikungunya arboviruses. Having commenced in Jamaica starting June 2017, we have now enrolled, as of this writing, 144 pregnant women and stored over 2,000 samples for diagnostic testing and further analysis.

The study protocol will be discussed during the Ethics Committee session at the end of July: approval expected by early September.

Soon afterwards, Francesco Bonfante will start the ex vivo infection of placental explants, at the IZSVe, virology laboratory directed by Calogero (Lillo) Terregino.

The University of the West Indies has started the enrollment. This is a real milestone for the ZIKAction VT study and we wish Celia Christie-Samuels and her team all the best for their work.  

We are pleased to announce the launch of our first quarterly ZIKAction newsletter, which was born from the collaboration with the other EU funded ZIKA consortia: ZIKAlliance and ZIKA PLAN. Hope you enjoy it!

ZIKAction and the other two EU funded Zika consortia have contributed to the creation of a Latin American and Caribbean preparedness and response network

Within the ZIKA-PATHO work package of ZIKAction, Dr. Maureen Long and her lab at the University of Florida have developed a sheep model of mother-to-child Zika virus transmission. Fetal sheep have proven to be an excellent model of fetal stress in human pregnancies, highly succeptible to early viral infection and demonstrating brain and limb defects in association with these infections.

ZIKAction visited the West African country of Cape Verde, which last year experienced an outbreak of Zika virus (ZIKV). The hospital personnel in Praia, the capital of Santiago – main-island warmly welcomed the ZIKAction team and are eager to contribute their first-hand experience with and knowledge of ZIKV infection in pregnancy to ZIKAction activities.

We are excited to begin enrollment in the prospective cohort study of mother-to-child transmission of Zika (ZIKV), Dengue (DENV) and Chikungunya (CHIKV) virus infection, having received ethics approval in Jamaica on April 5.