Nat Commun: The African genealogy Zika virus strain is more highly propagative and fetal pathogenic than the Asian genealogy

The Zika virus (ZIKV) is a yellow virus that is transmitted from person to person through the bites of the infected Aedes aegypti mosquito.
first human case of ZIKV occurred in 2007 on Yap island in the Western Pacific's Micronesian Islands.
followed a larger ZIKV outbreak in French Polynesia and other South Pacific islands between 2013 and 2014.
may 2015, ZIKV was first detected in Brazil and spread rapidly in the Americas and the Caribbean, resulting in hundreds of thousands of infections.
in less than a decade, ZIKV has changed from a little-known virus of sporadic human infection in Africa and Asia to an active, near-pandemic neural virus detected in nearly 87 countries and territories.
analysis of the evolutionary analysis of the genetic diversity system of the ZIKV virus identified two major ZIKV genealogies, known as the African and Asian linelogies, respectively.
the systematic developmental genealogy of the
ZIKV strain is surprising, and while there is growing evidence that the ZIKV lineage in Africa is more propagative and pathogenic, to date, outbreak epidemics and birth defects in all populations have been associated with the ZIKV lineage in Asia.
it is not clear whether this apparent paradox is due to the relatively old African ZIKV strain available in most studies and has undergone many transmissions.
Mosquito infection rates and transmission efficiency of Zika strains in Africa and Asia In order to more rigorously assess the relative prevalence potential of the ZIKV genealogy in Asia and Africa, the researchers compared seven low-transmission ZIKV strains representing the genetic diversity of the virus currently spreading.
researchers found that the recent African ZIKV strain showed higher transmission in mosquitoes and higher fatality rates in mice than Asian strains.
, the results highlight the high prevalence potential of the ZIKAV strain in Africa.
researchers found that African ZIKV strains are more likely to be ignored by public health surveillance systems than Asian strains because they are prone to fetal damage rather than birth defects.