The association of Guillain-Barré syndrome with Zika virus infection

15 The association of Guillain-Barré syndrome with Zika virus infection raises suspicion of 16 autoimmunity in the pathogenesis of Zika associated disease. Using computational analysis to 17 identify predicted B and T cell epitopes, we assessed whether antibodies elicited by B cell 18 epitopes in Zika virus may also target B cell epitopes in the human proteome. We detected amino 19 acid motifs predicted to be B cell epitopes in Zika virus proteins which are also present in human 20 proteins, including pro-neuropeptide Y (proNPY), NAV2 and other proteins with interacting 21 neurophysiologic function. We examine the predicted MHC binding of peptides likely to provide 22 T cell help to the potential mimic epitopes. Some potential mimic epitopes in Zika virus 23 envelope have apparently strong T cell help, likely facilitating immunoglobulin class switch. We 24 also identify epitope mimic commonalities with dengue serotypes 1 and 3. We hypothesize that 25 antibodies to Zika virus epitopes may contribute to the pathogenesis of Zika-associated Guillain26 Barré syndrome, microcephaly, and ocular lesions, and may be a driver of autoimmunity. The 27 . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/044834 doi: bioRxiv preprint first posted online Mar. 19, 2016;