Vaginal infection of pregnant mice by the Zika virus can cause growth restriction, brain infection and death of the fetus.

Some people have been infected by the Zika virus through sexual activity rather than from mosquito bites. To study the effects of the virus after sexual transmission, a team led by Akiko Iwasaki at the Yale University School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, developed a mouse model for vaginal transmission of the virus. They found that this mode of infection caused pathology in the fetuses in immunologically normal mothers; previous studies had suggested that Zika could not sustain long-lived infections in such animals when injected into the skin.

The results implicate the female genital tract as a particularly vulnerable site for Zika infection.

Cell http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2016.08.004 (2016)