POTENTIAL THERAPEUTIC EFFECT OF ZIKA VIRUS IN GLIOBLASTOMA TREATMENT

Abstract

Since the twentieth century, humanity has been experiencing a public health reality marked by numerous mosquito-borne diseases (belonging to the arthropod class), known as arboviruses. The Zika virus has become in recent years a risk to Brazilian and international public health due to its devastating effect due to its pathogenesis but also to fetal neurological development, causing serious health problems such as microcephaly and Guillain-Barré Syndrome, but also myelitis and meningoencephalitis. However, scientists studying the Zika virus have been trying to use the agent's ability to cause infections in healthy cells to attack and destroy cancer cells, such as the case of grade IV astrocytoma known as Gliobastoma Multiforme (GBM), which is a tumor of the very aggressive central nervous system and worse prognosis among primary cancers. As a result of effective therapy for GBM and the tropism of this etiological agent for brain cells, the hypothesis is that this virus would cause cell death in glioblastomas through metabolic alterations induced by the induced viral infection, but further studies must be carried out to demonstrate this therapeutic advantage in using the virus for the treatment of this malignant disease.

Keywords: Zika virus; Gliobastoma Multiforme; Tumor of the Central Nervous System.