SPERMATOZOA CAPTURE AND EFFICIENTLY TRANSMIT ZIKA VIRUS TO EPITHELIAL AND DENDRITIC CELLS.

VARESE, AUGUSTO; FEDERICO REMES LENICOV; JUAN SABATTE; GONZALES PRINZ, M; ERRA DÍAZ, FERNANDO; ANA CEBALLOS; PALLETA ANA; LOPEZ MALIZIA, ALVARO; GEFFNER, JORGE

Buenos Aires

Congreso; Reunión Conjunta de Sociedades de Biociencia; 2017

Sociedades de Biociencia

Zika virus (ZIKV) infection was associated to new born microcephalyand to Guillain-Barre syndrome in adults. Surprisingly, it hasbeen reported sexual transmission of ZIKV, changing our view ofarbovirus-host interaction. Infectious ZIKV persist in semen aftersymptoms onset and at higher viral loads than those found in plasmaor urine. Knowing that semen is not merely a carrier for sexuallytransmitted diseases, we developed experiments to evaluate therole of spermatozoa (sp) in ZIKV transmission.Sp were obtained from healthy donors by swim up purification.Dendritic cells (DC) were obtained from monocytes (GM-CSF/IL-45 days); phenotype was analyzed by flow cytometry and cytokinesproduction by ELISA. ZIKV capture and infection was evaluated byqPCR.Sp (10, 5, 1, 0.5 x106) were incubated with ZIKV (5x105 ufp) 90min, then cells were washed twice to remove free virus. We observedthat sp captured ZIKV (n=3 p