Commentary: Teratogenic effects of the Zika virus and the role of the placenta 

A widespread epidemic of Zika virus (ZIKV) infection was reported recently in South and Central America. The biggest concern to the ZIKV infection is the significant increase of microcephaly in the fetus born to the infected mother (Brasil et al., 2016; Johansson et al., 2016; Mlakar et al., 2016). The placenta acts as a barrier against the infection, due to its multiple unique structural, cellular and immune properties. However, the placenta may also play an important role in the virus transfer. One possibility is that the virus penetrates through the placental barrier. Zika virus could be packaged as a cargo for the placental exosome pathway at the endoplasmic reticulum in trophoblast cells. Then the secretory autophagy-pathway may cause secretion or expulsion of the viral particle rather than its degradation (Zhang et al., 2017). Alternatively, the infection to the placenta may induce several immune responses and lead to brain defects indirectly (Adibi et al., 2016). A recent study indicated that the ZIKV genome could be detected in the amniotic fluid (Calvet et al., 2016), and the complete genome of ZIKV can be also recovered from the fetal brain (Mlakar et al., 2016), all of which confirm that the virus can cross the placental barrier (Mysorekar and Diamond, 2016).

Commentary: Teratogenic effects of the Zika virus and the role of the placenta 
Source: Virology News