3-D representation of Zika virionWIKIMEDIA, MANUEL ALMAGRO RIVASA more-severe dengue virus infection can occur in an individual previously exposed to a different dengue virus serotype. Researchers theorize that this more-severe secondary infection occurs because circulating anti-dengue antibodies are cross-reactive, helping virions of a different viral serotype invade and replicate within host cells. This phenomenon is known as antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). Whether existing antibodies to dengue could enhance infection by another flavivirus, Zika, in humans remains an open question. However, researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City have now demonstrated that ADE occurs in immunocompromised mice infected with Zika. The team’s results were published today (March 30) in Science.
“This is an excellent piece of fundamental science addressing the question of antibody-dependent enhancement in mice,” said Nelson Michael, an HIV researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland, whose team is developing a Zika vaccine.
“Most of the evidence of Zika enhancement that exists up to now is from in vitro experiments, while this paper looks at outcomes in mice,” Isabel Rodríguez-Barraquer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, wrote in an email to The Scientist.
Mount Sinai’s Jean Lim, Florian Krammer, Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, and their colleagues collected plasma samples from more than 200 people who were previously infected with dengue or West Nile virus, a more distantly related flavivirus, and who tested ...
