New Insights on the Zika Virus Arrival in the Americas and Spatiotemporal Reconstruction of the Epidemic Dynamics in Brazil.

Larissa Catharina Costa,Artur T L Queiroz,Rafael Valente Veiga,Juliane Fonseca Oliveira,Roberto F S Andrade,Luciana L Cardim,Enny S Paixão,Wanderson K Oliveira,Qeren H R F Fernandes,Eduardo H Carmo,Maurício L Barreto,Tiago Gräf,Maria Da Conceição N Costa,Maria Glória Teixeira,Moreno S Rodrigues,José Í K Gonçalves

doi:10.3390/v13010012

Larissa Catharina Costa, Artur T L Queiroz + Show 14 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/v13010012

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Abstract

Zika virus (ZIKV) became a worldwide public health emergency after its introduction in the Americas. Brazil was implicated as central in the ZIKV dispersion, however, a better understanding of the pathways the virus took to arrive in Brazil and the dispersion within the country is needed. An updated genome dataset was assembled with publicly available data. Bayesian phylogeography methods were applied to reconstruct the spatiotemporal history of ZIKV in the Americas and with more detail inside Brazil. Our analyses reconstructed the Brazilian state of Pernambuco as the likely point of introduction of ZIKV in Brazil, possibly during the 2013 Confederations Cup. Pernambuco played an important role in spreading the virus to other Brazilian states. Our results also underscore the long cryptic circulation of ZIKV in all analyzed locations in Brazil. Conclusions: This study brings new insights about the early moments of ZIKV in the Americas, especially regarding the Brazil-Haiti cluster at the base of the American clade and describing for the first time migration patterns within Brazil.

Highlights

Zika virus (ZIKV) is a positive-stranded RNA arbovirus belonging to the Flaviviridae family and Flavivirus genus
In line with previous studies, our results estimated that ZIKV was introduced in Brazil from French Polynesia and the time of the most recent common ancestor of all the American clade was estimated between November 2013 and March 2014 (95% HPD) (Figure 2)
In agreement with previous studies [9,11,12], our results found that ZIKV arrived in the Americas through Brazil and from there it spread to other countries

Summary

Introduction

Zika virus (ZIKV) is a positive-stranded RNA arbovirus belonging to the Flaviviridae family and Flavivirus genus. It was first isolated in 1947 from the serum of a febrile Rhesus monkey during a yellow fever study in a forest named “Zika” near Lake Victoria in Uganda [1]. ZIKV was first isolated in Nigeria in 1954 [2]. For 60 years, ZIKV was confined to an equatorial zone across Africa and Asia causing sporadic infections in humans. In 2007, the outbreak of the virus in Yap Island, Federated States of Micronesia, marked the first detection of ZIKV in Oceania [3]. In 2013–2014, the virus spread to French Polynesia [4] and other Pacific Islands, such as Cook Islands [5], Easter Island [6], New Caledonia [7], and Tahiti [8]

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