Mother's dengue immunity worsens baby's response to Zika

Medical Xpress | March 01, 2019

Researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School and their colleagues have identified a surprising interaction between dengue and Zika viruses that sheds lights on the significant fetal brain abnormalities linked to Zika virus. The researchers found that fetal mouse brain damage was much worse if the mothers infected with Zika also had dengue antibodies. They further determined that an immune complex that forms when dengue antibodies attach to the Zika virus is recognized by a receptor on placental cells, allowing the virus to travel across the placenta into fetal cells. Their findings are reported in the journal Science Advances. Asst Prof St. John and a team of researchers in Singapore wanted to investigate why some, but not all, Zika virus infections during pregnancy led to fetal brain abnormalities. They also wanted to know if the severity of fetal infection had anything to do with the previous infection of the mother with dengue virus, which is closely related to Zika and often circulates in the same regions of the world.

Spotlight

This technical note demonstrates the comprehensive
characterization and confident identification of glucuronide
metabolites from hepatocyte incubations of midazolam. An
orthogonal fragmentation mechanism was applied to generate diagnostic fragment ions for confident identification of glucuronide metabolites

Spotlight

This technical note demonstrates the comprehensive
characterization and confident identification of glucuronide
metabolites from hepatocyte incubations of midazolam. An
orthogonal fragmentation mechanism was applied to generate diagnostic fragment ions for confident identification of glucuronide metabolites

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