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DECEMBER 2018
Dear All,
 

 
As coordinators of the three EU-funded Zika consortia, we are keen to share our latest activities, publications and meetings since our previous joint newsletter.
 
In this edition, we are particularly pleased to highlight the remarkable kind of collaboration we are seeing among our consortia and the broader Zika research community. This unprecedented openness is clear throughout the many study sites of the three consortia in Latin America, where teams of investigators are committed to pooling data from their cohort studies of pregnant women and children affected by Zika virus (ZIKV) in a large-scale individual participant data meta-analysis (IPD-MA). This will happen after the individual cohorts are completed, but provisions need to be made now to ensure the comparability of data. You can find out more about this in the cross consortia section of our newsletter. In addition, a joint statistical analysis group has been formed, including members from all the three consortia (Kerstin Rosenberger and Neal Alexander from ZIKAlliance; Elizabeth Brickley from ZikaPLAN; and Tony Ades from ZIKAction). They are working together to understand how best to approach the data and to develop a joint statistical analysis of the findings.
 
Close collaboration is also taking place in diagnostics. Representatives of all three consortia were present at the World Health Organization (WHO) Diagnostics meeting in October and, following the meeting, Thomas Jaenisch (ZIKAlliance and acting chair of the IPD-MA) met with the group led by Nathalie Broutet (WHO) to discuss the future progress of the IPD-MA. We feel that this culture shift towards the sharing of data is a major step forward in ensuring rapid response to future public health emergencies.
 
In a new cross-consortia study published in BMC Medicine in October 2018, O’Reilly et al. suggest that the ZIKV epidemic is by and large over within Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), with incidence projected to be low in most cities in 2018. Local low levels of transmission remain probable, but the estimated rate of infection suggests that most cities have a population with high levels of herd immunity. The authors of the study point out that representative seroprevalence surveys will be most useful to understanding past spread and future risk of ZIKV epidemics in LAC.
Copyright: © The Author(s). 2018
 
Finally, ZikaPLAN and ZIKAction recently gathered for their annual scientific meetings. The ZikaPLAN meeting took place at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (UK) on 11 and 12 September. Here, the various ZikaPLAN working groups, involving 60 members, reported on the latest scientific developments and discussed key areas of collaboration, including: clinical cohorts and networks; diagnostic evaluations; disease burden, risk assessment and modelling; social science, community engagement and vector control. The ZIKAction meeting was held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, between 3 and 5 November. Around 40 researchers, health professionals and project managers from partner organizations met to discuss recent results from various studies, urgent issues and the latest epidemiological trends of ZIKV and other arboviruses. The meeting was an opportunity to discuss more in-depth the impact and consequences of the ZIKV outbreak in Brazil, one of the countries hardest-hit by the epidemic.
 
We hope you enjoy this issue of the cross-consortia newsletter, and if you want to provide any suggestions for future content, please contact your consortium’s communication officer: Giuseppe at Giuseppe.Paparella@ndm.ox.ac.uk (ZIKAlliance), Koren at Koren.Wolman-Tardy@fondation-merieux.org (ZikaPLAN), and Francesca at Francesca.Mazzetto@pentafoundation.org (ZIKAction).

Best wishes,
 
Prof. Carlo Giaquinto, ZIKAction Scientific Coordinator
Prof. Xavier de Lamballerie, ZIKAlliance Scientific Coordinator
Prof. Annelies Wilder-Smith, ZikaPLAN Scientific Coordinator

 
Projects ZIKAlliance, ZikaPLAN, ZIKAction have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreements No 734548, 734584, 734857 respectively.
Cross Consortia Collaboration
Within the Zika virus (ZIKV) research community, a new and remarkable kind of collaboration is taking place
Read More
News & Publications from the Three Consortia
Professor Celia Christie-Samuels awarded national honour “Order of Distinction”
READ MORE

Annual ZIKAction Consortium meeting 2018
READ MORE

Is adaptation to the placenta a strain-dependent feature of ZIKA viruses?

READ MORE
View All Publications
ZIKAlliance travels to Peru and Ecuador: Thomas Jaenisch travelled to Peru and Ecuador in order to start investigate the health impact and potential future outbreaks of Zika virus (ZIKV) in both countries.
READ MORE


News from the Consortium: Well-received talks by Gustavo Matta and Patricia Brasil at the ZIKAction Annual Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the social aspects regarding of Zika virus infection and the ongoing work on the paediatric cohorts were discussed. 

16th International Course on Dengue, Zika and other Emergent Arboviruses: 12-23 August 2019, Institute of Tropical Medicine “Pedro Kourí”, Havana, Cuba.
READ MORE
Estimating the risk of Dengue, Chikungunya and Zika outbreaks in a large European city
Solimini et al.
Scientific Reports, November 2018

Research Models and Tools for the Identification of Antivirals and Therapeutics against Zika Virus Infection
Alves et al.
Viruses, October 2018

Potential effect of Zika virus infection on human male fertility?
Avelino-Silva et al.
Revista do Instituto de Medicina Tropical de São Paulo, October 2018

Zika virus infects human testicular tissue and germ cells
Matusali et al.
The Journal of Clinical Investigation, October 2018

Differential transmission of Asian and African Zika virus lineages by Aedes aegypti from New Caledonia
Calvez et al.
Emerging Microbes & Infections, September 2018
View All Publications
Bringing diagnostics to the field
READ MORE

An improved Aedes aegypti reference genome to accelerate new disease elimination strategies
READ MORE

ZikaPLAN Scientific Consortium Meeting: Exploring novel tools and the latest developments in the fight against Zika 
READ MORE
View All Publications
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