Preventing Zika virus infection during pregnancy by timing conception seasonally
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Epidemiology, Global Health, Health Policy, Infectious Diseases, Women's Health
- Keywords
- Zika, infectious disease, mosquito, pregnancy, childhood, microcephaly, family planning, season
- Copyright
- © 2016 Martinez-Bakker
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2016. Preventing Zika virus infection during pregnancy by timing conception seasonally. PeerJ Preprints 4:e1818v2 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1818v2
Abstract
It has come to light that ZIKV infection during pregnancy can result in fetal death, damage to the central nervous system, and growth restrictions. In 2016 there are expected to be >8,600,000 births in countries with ongoing ZIKV transmission. In response to the ZIKV threat, the WHO is strategically targeting prevention of infection in pregnant women and funding contraception use in epidemic regions. I propose that the damaging effects of ZIKV can be curtailed by timing pregnancy seasonally to minimize maternal exposure to ZIKV. The ZIKV mosquito vector has seasonal changes in its abundance and flavivirus transmission competence. By seasonally planning pregnancy, this aspect of vector ecology can be leveraged to align sensitive periods of gestation with the low-transmission season.
Author Comment
The manuscript was edited to integrate new information regarding the consequences of ZIKV infection during pregnancy. Based on new work by Patrícia Brasil et al. published in March 4, 2016 in NEJM, pregnant women infected from weeks 8-35 of gestation were observed to have fetal abnormalities. This suggests that the ZIKV-susceptible window of gestation spans at least weeks 8-35, and the entire pregnancy could be susceptible. I accounted for the window of susceptibility to rerun the projections for Puerto Rico and develop a calendar that can be used to regionally-plan conception seasonally. I changed Fig 1b to a stacked time series rather than a continuous time series.