Two Inserm teams involving Unit 1058, “Pathogenesis and Control of Chronic Infections” (Inserm/University of Montpellier/French Blood Transfusion Service) and Unit 1051, “Montpellier Institute of Neurosciences,” have just shown that Zika virus can infect the pigment epithelium of the human retina, and may thus be able to cause retinal damage.

This study is published in Journal of Virology.

Infection by Zika virus may result in several types of symptoms, particularly neurological damage of the Guillain-Barre type in adults and microcephalies in newborn children and infants. However, several studies suggest that the eye might be a preferred target of the virus, and ocular damage has been recently described in infected people.

Two Inserm teams have just demonstrated for the first time that the pigment epithelium of the human retina is permissive to infection by Zika virus. Using a human retinal pigment epithelium model derived from induced pluripotent stem cells, these teams were able to show that the virus replicates very efficiently in this type of cell. Moreover, the infection disrupts the integrity of the epithelium, and can thus have serious consequences for infected individuals, in terms of both visual function and viral transmission.

This study therefore emphasises the paramount importance of better characterising the ocular damage observed in certain individuals who have been infected by Zika virus