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A major global public health question is whether the newly emerged flavivirus, the Zika virus (ZIKV), causes microcephaly (NEJM JW Infect Dis 2016 Apr 20 and N Engl J Med 2016 Apr 13; [e-pub]). Two new studies provide in vitro evidence that ZIKV can both infect human neural progenitor cells and affect their growth.
Tang and colleagues studied the ability of a ZIKV isolate to infect various human cell lines. They found that ZIKV could infect human neural progenitor cells (hNPCs) derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells, with infection spreading to 65% to 90% of hNPCs in cell culture within 3 days. Compared with mock exposure, infection with ZIKV led to an approximate 30% reduction in hNPCs within 66 to 72 hours. ZIKV-infected cells h…