Rift Valley fever virus is able to cross the human blood-brain barrier

Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a zoonotic arboviral disease that causes recurrent epidemics in Africa that may trigger fatal neurological disorders. However, the mechanisms of neuroinvasion by which the RVF virus (RVFV) reaches the human central nervous system (CNS) remain poorly characterized. In particular, it is not clear how RVFV is able to cross the human blood-brain barrier (hBBB), which is a neurovascular endothelium that protects the brain by regulating brain and blood exchanges. To explore these mechanisms, we used an