Antibody Response to Dengue, Zika and Other Flaviviruses

Dear Colleagues,

Flaviviruses are leading causes of human morbidity and mortality. The world is in the 50th year of a pandemic of the four dengue viruses. Recently, the Americas have just recovered from an extension of a Zika epidemic introduced from areas of endemicity in Asia and Africa. Furthermore, the zoonotic Japanese encephalitis continues to devastate huge areas of Asia. Antibodies to dengue virus have been found to play a critical role in protecting and enhancing disease severity, a phenomenon known as antibody-dependent enhancement. Immune responses—particularly of antibodies to one, two or more different dengue infections—operate in complex ways to mediate protection or disease by all viruses in the dengue serocomplex. Immune responses are known to have adversely impacted the development of safe and effective dengue vaccines. The recent Zika pandemic occurring in the American dengue-endemic region has refocused attention towards complex antibody cross-reactivities among the flaviviruses and demonstrated unexpected protection and enhancement between Zika and dengue viruses in both directions. In this respect, Zika’s behavior is similar to the enhancement of dengue infections by Japanese encephalitis or protection against severe dengue by the Japanese encephalitis vaccine. Zika virus is known to be firmly established in huge areas of Asia and Africa that are also endemic for dengue; it threatens to become established endemically or enzootically and may re-emerge in the American tropics. The Zika invasion should refocus attention on the immunological and pathogenic mechanisms of flaviviruses. These remain a challenge to serodiagnosis and serosurveillance in endemic regions and to the disease pathogenesis of either the dengue viruses or Zika.

This Special Issue on the “Antibody Response to Dengue, Zika and Other Flaviviruses” provides an opportunity to highlight new discoveries and summarize the current understanding of immune protection and immune enhancement in this group of viruses. We invite new studies or reviews on serosurveillance, disease pathogenesis, vaccine safety or protection and studies on antibodies to dengue, Zika and other flaviviruses, including: studies on in vitro systems, mouse or non-human primate models and human cohorts, with emphasis on human infection outcomes in regions where multiple flaviviruses co-circulate.

Prof. Dr. Wei-Kung Wang
Dr. Scott Halstead
Guest Editors

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• dengue virus
• zika virus
• flavivirus
• antibody
• mechanism
• immune protection
• enhancement
• animal models
• pathogenesis
• vaccine