{"id":2157,"date":"2018-02-20T13:54:54","date_gmt":"2018-02-20T21:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/a-zika-surprise-african-strain-can-do-more-damage-than-asian-strain\/"},"modified":"2023-11-19T12:25:27","modified_gmt":"2023-11-19T20:25:27","slug":"a-zika-surprise-african-strain-can-do-more-damage-than-asian-strain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/a-zika-surprise-african-strain-can-do-more-damage-than-asian-strain\/","title":{"rendered":"A Zika surprise: African strain can do more damage than Asian strain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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\n\n \n Press Release<\/span>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
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A Zika surprise: African strain can do more damage than Asian strain<\/h1>\n\n\n<\/div>\n \n \n
\n Katharine Gammon<\/span>\n \n February 20, 2018<\/span>\n <\/div>\n \n \n
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Jianfu Chen (Photo courtesy of the Ostrow School of Dentistry of USC)<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n \n \n \n\n<\/div>\n \n\n <\/div><\/div>\n\r\n\r\n\n\n \n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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The Zika virus has spread to 44 countries, with thousands infected and thousands of babies born with microcephaly, a rare complication that causes small heads. But even though research dollars are being poured into understanding the virus, there are still numerous outstanding questions. USC Assistant Professor Jianfu Chen is working to answer some of the persistent questions about the virus.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Chen\u2019s lab\u00a0at Ostrow\u2019s\u00a0Center for Craniofacial Molecular Biology<\/a>\u00a0studies the genetic mutations that cause microcephaly. \u201cThere are some genetic deletions in the human population that can cause microcephaly, and we are trying to understand the cause of the defect,\u201d he says. Although microcephaly can occur naturally, Zika can also cause it \u2014 though the process how isn\u2019t entirely known.<\/p>\n

The origins of Zika can be divided into two lineages: Asian and African. The strain that has caused outbreaks \u2014 and babies born with microcephaly \u2014 in South America and the Caribbean come from the Asian strain of the disease. There have been no reports of the African origin Zika causing microcephaly, and that was a puzzle, Chen says. The strains are relatively similar, with a difference of only about 110 amino acid bases. \u201cWe were interested to know why they have different impacts on the brain development by doing a side-by-side comparison using the animal model developed from our previous studies,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In the new study, Chen injected embryonic mouse brains with Asian and African strains of Zika. Surprisingly, he found that the African Zika virus caused more brain damage and was more likely to kill the baby mice than the Asian strain of the virus. It increased cell death in neuron precursors and neurons, creating smaller, more damaged brains. The study also found that the dengue virus, a close family member of Zika virus, also caused smaller brain size, but that the damage was much less than with Zika. The results of Chen\u2019s study were recently published in the journal\u00a0Development<\/i><\/a>.<\/p>\n

So far, there hasn\u2019t been direct documentation of the African strain causing babies to be born with microcephaly, and that could because the brain damage is so severe that the baby doesn\u2019t survive pregnancy or early abortion, Chen says.<\/p>\n

Another possibility is that in the regions where the African strain exists, women have immunity to the infection before they get pregnant, so the virus doesn\u2019t cause that much damage to the baby. A third possibility is that babies are being born with microcephaly, but that the medical recording systems in the countries where it\u2019s happening aren\u2019t recording or documenting those events. \u201cWe just don\u2019t know,\u201d Chen says. The African strain hasn\u2019t migrated to other continents \u2014 yet.<\/p>\n

Chen hopes to find out more of Zika\u2019s secrets in the future. The strain he used in the experiments was a general strain that had been adapted over many generations. He hopes to experiment with current versions of the African strains, to figure out why and how Zika brings devastating damages to the baby brains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n\n <\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Zika virus has spread to 44 countries, with thousands infected and thousands of babies born with microcephaly, a rare complication that causes small heads. But even though research dollars are being poured into understanding the virus, there are still numerous outstanding questions. USC Assistant Professor Jianfu Chen is working to answer some of the persistent questions about the virus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":2159,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"advgb_blocks_editor_width":"","advgb_blocks_columns_visual_guide":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-2157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-press-release","tag-stem-cell"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nA Zika surprise: African strain can do more damage than Asian strain<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/keck.usc.edu\/news\/a-zika-surprise-african-strain-can-do-more-damage-than-asian-strain\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Zika surprise: African strain can do more damage than Asian strain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Zika virus has spread to 44 countries, with thousands infected and thousands of babies born with microcephaly, a rare complication that causes small heads. 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