Possible Emergence of Zika Virus of African Lineage in Brazil and the Risk for New Outbreaks.

Keywords: Congenital Zika Syndrome; epidemic; teratogenesis; animal models; viral emergence; birth defects EN Congenital Zika Syndrome epidemic teratogenesis animal models viral emergence birth defects 1 5 5 07/27/21 20210723 NES 210723 Introduction In 2015, an outbreak of Zika virus (ZIKV) infection caused a disproportionate increase in the number of cases of microcephaly in Brazil ([9]). Although two major ZIKV lineages referred to as African lineage (ZIKV SP AF sp ) and Asian lineage (ZIKV SP AS sp ) have been identified, phylogenetic and genomic analyses pointed to those cases as caused by a ZIKV SP AS sp ([11]). In 2016, the Northeast, Southeast, and Central-West regions were severely hit by the ZIKV epidemic accounting for 93.5% of the nationwide reported cases (16.11, 42.98 and 15.8%, respectively), whereas in Southern Brazil, only few cases of ZIKV infection (< 0.5%) had been reported ([30]; [5]; [24]) (Figure 1). In Brazil, ZIKV disease displayed uneven epidemiological outcomes across the regions B ( b [30]; [5]) (Figure 1), thus the epidemic potential of ZIKV to cause disease in humans and new outbreaks cannot be discarded. [Extracted from the article]