Zika virus reservoirs: Implications for transmission, future

Zika virus (ZIKV) was recently declared as a ‘Global Health Emergency’ by the World Health Organization. Various tissue reservoirs of ZIKV in infected humans and animals models have been observed, the implications of which are not known. Compared to other Flaviviruses, sexual transmission and persistence in the genitourinary tract seem to be unique to ZIKV. ZIKV persistence and shedding in bodily secretions (e.g. saliva, semen) is a concern for potential disease spread and could pose challenges in diagnosis, regulatory guidelines and drug/vaccine development. Murine and non-human primate models could be useful to study the role of tissue reservoirs in the development of prophylactic or therapeutic strategies. There is a need for meta-analysis of the ZIKV infection and virus shedding data from infected patients and ZIKV animal models, and additional research is needed to fully comprehend the long term implications of tissue reservoirs on ZIKV disease pathogenesis and biology. This article is included in the Zika & Arbovirus collection. Outbreaks Raj Kalkeri ( ) Corresponding author: [email protected] : Conceptualization, Writing – Original Draft Preparation, Writing – Review & Editing; : Conceptualization, Author roles: Kalkeri R Murthy KK Writing – Review & Editing Competing interests: No competing interests were disclosed. Kalkeri R and Murthy KK. How to cite this article: Zika virus reservoirs: Implications for transmission, future outbreaks, drug and vaccine 2017, :1850 (doi: ) development [version 1; referees: 1 approved] F1000Research 6 10.12688/f1000research.12695.1 © 2017 Kalkeri R and Murthy KK. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Copyright: Creative Commons Attribution , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Licence The author(s) declared that no grants were involved in supporting this work. Grant information: 17 Oct 2017, :1850 (doi: ) First published: 6 10.12688/f1000research.12695.1 1