High Infection Rates for Adult Macaques after Intravaginal or Intrarectal Inoculation with Zika Virus

• DOI: 10.3201/eid2308.170036
• Publication Date: 2017-05-26T14:24:39Z
• Authors: Andrew D. Haddow; Aysegul Nalca; Franco D. Rossi; Lynn J. Miller; Michael R. Wiley; Unai Perez-Sautu; Samuel C. Washington; Sarah L. Norris; Suzanne E. Wollen...; Joshua D. Shamblin; Adrienne E. Kimmel; Holly A. Bloomfield; Stephanie M. Valdez; Thomas R. Sprague; Lucia M. Principe; Stephanie A. Bell...; Stephanie S. Cink...; Luis Lugo-Roman; Lisa H. Cazares; William D. Pratt; Gustavo F. Palacios; Sina Bavari; M. Louise Pitt; Farooq Nasar
• Keywords: Viremia; Zika Virus; Seroconversion; Sexual transmission

Unprotected sexual intercourse between persons residing in or traveling from regions with Zika virus transmission is a risk factor for infection. To model infection after intercourse, we inoculated rhesus and cynomolgus macaques by intravaginal intrarectal routes. In intravaginally, detected viremia RNA 50% of macaques, followed seroconversion. intrarectally, viremia, RNA, both, 100% both species, The magnitude duration infectious the blood suggest humans infected through will likely generate viremias sufficient to infect competent mosquito vectors. Our results indicate that might serve as maintenance mechanism absence mosquito-to-human could increase probability establishment spread where this not present.