March, 2016
Renata Fountora / (Fiocruz Paraná)
A study has shown that the zika virus crosses the placenta at any stage of pregnancy. Photo: Fiocruz Paraná.
The link between congenital malformation and zika virus infection in pregnant women was reinforced by a study conducted by the Carlos Chagas Institute (ICC / Fiocruz Paraná) in partnership with the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (PUC-PR).
The study analyzed samples – received from a Fiocruz laboratory for the diagnosis of zika – of the placenta of pregnant women infected at different stages of pregnancy and tissues of the brain of babies who died within 24 hours after birth.
The results show that the virus has infected the placenta in all cases and that this is the main target tissue, in the case of pregnant women, along with the tissues of the brain in the case of babies.
“We showed that the virus reaches the placenta at any stage of pregnancy. In addition to the analysis of placental tissues of pregnant women that reported symptoms of zika infection in the first trimester of pregnancy – one women that suffered a missed abortion and two others who had babies with malformations that died a few hours after birth – we investigated the case of a pregnant woman who had the diagnosis confirmed by the molecular technique of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) and by the serological diagnosis in the third trimester of pregnancy. In that case, the women gave birth to a healthy baby, despite the presence of the virus in placental samples,” explained Cláudia Nunes Duarte, head of the Molecular Virology Laboratory of Fiocruz Paraná.
Read the full story in Portuguese.
