Preliminary surveillance data in Colombia suggest that maternal infection with the Zika virus during the third trimester of pregnancy is not linked to structural abnormalities in the fetus. However, the monitoring of the effect of ZVD on pregnant women in Colombia is ongoing.
In a notorious scene in the film Marathon Man, a runner (played by Dustin Hoffman) is repeatedly asked by the Nazi dentist character (played by the late Laurence Olivier), “Is it safe?” With the Olympic Games due to start on Aug 5 and Paralympic Games on Sept 7, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, a country experiencing an outbreak of Zika virus infection, athletes from a plethora of sports, officials, and spectators will be asking themselves the same question. Already the South Korean Olympic team has announced that its athletes’ uniforms will be coated with mosquito repellent.
To date, 39 countries and territories have confirmed local, vector-borne transmission of Zika virus disease in the Region of the Americas since 2015 (Figure 1). Since the last Pan American Health Organization/ World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) Zika Epidemiological Update on 2 June 2016, no additional countries or territories confirmed vector-borne autochthonous transmission of Zika virus.
WRAIR is working on the vaccine in collaboration with other U.S. government agencies, including theBiomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority — part of the Department of Health and Human Services — and the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It is also exploring collaborations with pharmaceutical companies, Thomas said.
The vaccine will contain a killed strain of the virus that is circulating now in South America, he added.
“This is not something like dengue, where there are four dengue virus types and you have to include every type,” he explained. “We feel pretty comfortable that for an initial vaccine construct, a single strain will be sufficient. We believe that it’s a good idea [to use] the strain that is causing the congenital syndromes and neurologic defects appearing in that region.”
Here we report the ophthalmic findings of an infant (age at exam: 57 days; head circumference: 33 cm; weight at birth: 3500 g; gestational age at birth: 38 weeks) who was referred for ophthalmic examination by a neurologist for suspected congenital Zika virus infection.
This case highlights that microcephaly should not be a required criterion for congenital Zika virus infection diagnosis, since infants without microcephaly could still have been infected by ZIKV during gestation. We emphasise the need for public health authorities to provide fundus screening to infants with suspected congenital Zika virus infection, because ocular findings might be underdiagnosed if microcephaly continues to be an inclusion criterion in the screening of this group of infants.
Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School (UMMS) say they have found that interferon-induced protein 3 (IFITM3) can dramatically reduce the ability of Zika virus to infect human and mouse cells. In some cases, IFITM3 can also prevent Zika virus from killing our cells.
IFITM3 blocks Zika virus infection. When human cells are exposed to Zika virus they are overwhelmingly infected, as seen by the large number of green cells (left panel). When IFITM3 levels were boosted in these cells, the same amount of virus was prevented from replicating (right panel). [BrassLab/UMass Medical School]
“This work represents the first look at how our cells defend themselves against Zika virus’ attack,” said Dr. Brass. “Our results show that Zika virus has a weakness that we could potentially exploit to prevent or stop infection.”
Existing evidence and unpublished data shared with WHO highlight the wider range of congenital abnormalities probably associated with the acquisition of Zika virus infection in utero. In addition to microcephaly, other manifestations include craniofacial disproportion, spasticity, seizures, irritability and brainstem dysfunction including feeding difficulties, ocular abnormalities and findings on neuroimaging such as calcifications, cortical disorders and ventriculomegaly.3–6,8–10 Similar to other infections acquired in utero, cases range in severity; some babies have been reported to have neurological abnormalities with a normal head circumference. Preliminary data from Colombia and Panama also suggest that the genitourinary, cardiac and digestive systems can be affected (Pilar Ramon-Pardo, unpublished data).
Substances in a common plant can kill larvae of the mosquito that helps spread the viruses that cause Zika, chikungunya and dengue fever. That’s the discovery of a teen from the Philippines. His research may help public health officials develop a way to slow the spread of those deadly diseases. It also may give homeowners hints about how to home-brew their own mosquito-killing cocktail.
We are writing to express our concern about the upcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. WHO’s declaration of Zika as a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” coupled with new scientific findings that underscore the seriousness of that problem, call for the Rio 2016 Games to be postponed and/or moved to another location—but not cancelled—in the name of public health.
The researchers developed a mathematical model with six periods of assumed increased risk of microcephaly given Zika infection to investigate when the risk of infection and the magnitude of the risk were greatest. The period of risk with the best fit was infection in the first trimester of pregnancy. The risk of microcephaly associated with Zika virus infection was 95 (34–191) per 10 000 women infected in the first trimester: essentially a risk of microcephaly for infection in the first trimester of around 1%.
