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Zika virus outbreak
Topic Started: 16 Jan 2016, 02:02 AM (816 Views)
skibboy
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15 January 2016

Haiti hit with Zika virus outbreak: official

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© AFP/File | The Zika virus is a mosquito-borne ailment similar to dengue fever that is rapidly spreading through the Caribbean

PORT-AU-PRINCE (AFP) - Haiti's health ministry said Friday the country has been hit by an outbreak of the Zika virus, a mosquito-borne ailment similar to dengue fever that is rapidly spreading through the Caribbean.

Health Minister Florence Duperval Guillaume confirmed the outbreak at a press conference, saying that she too, was recovering from a bout of the illness.

"Even I fell ill," the minister said, although she did not have the diagnosis confirmed by testing.

A health lab in Trinidad and Tobago confirmed on Thursday that five out of 11 Haitian blood samples tested positive for the disease -- a finding suggesting that it could be rampant in this impoverished nation.

There have been no known fatalities from Zika, but the virus is of particular concern to pregnant women, because it can lead to birth defects and miscarriage.

Zika is spread by the Aedes genus of mosquitoes, some varieties of which also spread dengue virus, yellow fever virus and Chikungunya.

A female mosquito bites an infected person and then carries the virus to the next person she bites.

Symptoms, which usually are relatively mild, can include fever, rash, conjunctivitis and headache.

In more serious cases, they can include muscle pain, swelling and an itchy rash.

Haitian officials have been taken to task for what critics said has been a slow response to the outbreak.

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skibboy
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Zika virus 'scarier than thought' says US

2 hours ago

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The Zika virus is "scarier" than first thought and its impact on the US could be greater than predicted, public health officials have admitted.

A wider range of birth defects has been linked to the virus, said Dr Anne Schuchat of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And the mosquitoes that carry the virus could travel to more US states than previously thought, she said.

The current Zika outbreak began almost a year ago in Brazil.

It has been linked to thousands of birth defects in the Americas.

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Hundreds of mothers in Brazil have had babies with birth defects because of the Zika virus

"Most of what we've learned is not reassuring," said Dr Schuchat at White House briefing on Monday.

"Everything we know about this virus seems to be scarier than we initially thought."

Earlier this year, US President Obama asked the US Congress for $1.8bn (£1.25bn) in emergency funding to combat the virus.

In the meantime it has been using money totalling $589m left over from the Ebola virus fund.

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That was a temporary stopgap and inadequate to get the job done, said Dr Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health.

The US now needs more money to fight the mosquitoes and to fund better research into vaccines and treatments, he said.

"When the president asked for $1.9 billion, we needed $1.9 billion."

Without want to be alarmist, he said there had been recent discoveries about how destructive Zika appeared to be to foetal brains.

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The rapid spread of the Zika virus has spurred travel warnings across the globe

There were also reports of rare neurologic problems in adults, he said.

The CDC announced that Puerto Rico is to receive $3.9m in emergency Zika funding as the number of cases there doubles every week.

In February, the first US case of locally transmitted Zika was reported in Dallas, Texas - spread through sexual contact, not a mosquito bite.

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skibboy
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11 April 2016

Summer coming to Europe and US, and maybe Zika with it: experts

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© AFP/File / by Mariëtte Le Roux | Zika is borne by the Aedes aegypti mosquito found in Latin America and the Caribbean, regions still in the grip of an outbreak of the virus linked to brain damage in babies and neurological diseases in adults

AMSTERDAM (AFP) - With summer approaching, Zika may find its way into virus-carrying mosquitoes in Europe or the United States, disease experts have warned, but any outbreaks are likely to be small and short-lived.

Doctors and scientists attending a major infectious diseases conference in Amsterdam said there was no reason to panic, and the idea of screening travellers was far-fetched.

Zika is borne by the Aedes aegypti mosquito found in Latin America and the Caribbean, regions still in the grip of an outbreak of the virus which has been linked to severe brain damage in babies and rare neurological diseases in adults.

"We have to accept that someday there will be a... traveller coming back from South America with Zika virus in his or her blood and there is a potential risk of starting a transmission," tropical medicine professor Eskild Petersen of Denmark's Aarhus University said Monday.

"I would say that the southern part of the United States and southern Europe are definitely at risk," he told AFP on the conference sidelines.

However, he stressed, the risk should not be exaggerated.

"It is a disease which in the vast majority of cases is a mild viral disease."

Rare cases of sexual virus transmission have also been recorded.

- Unknown entity -

The warmer summer months bring with them the peak mosquito season for Europe and the United States after the insects' eggs -- typically found in stagnant water -- hatch.

In Europe, the potential threat comes from a related mosquito, Aedes albopictus, which began to spread in southern Europe about 25 years ago.

Albopictus is not known to have transmitted Zika to humans in the wild, but has been shown capable of doing so in laboratory experiments.

"A real risk for Europe? No, I don't think so," said Jean-Paul Stahl, an infectious diseases expert from the Grenoble University Hospital in France.

"The vector (the mosquito) is in the Mediterranean areas, but we don't have the virus. Not yet."

There is a risk of "some little outbreaks" around a single imported case, he added, "but I don't think at this time the virus will resettle in Europe."

The main challenge, according to Petersen, would be to prevent infected blood making its way into blood banks and being given to a patient with low immune protection.

According to Nick Beeching, a senior lecturer on infectious diseases at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, it is hard to predict threat based on the limited data available.

Very little is known about Zika -- how long it may hide out in the human body, the degree of risk of sexual transmission, and the full list of diseases it may cause.

"We think its mostly transmitted by the mosquitos that transmit dengue and similar infections, so we think there is probably not going to be much of a problem in countries where you don't have those mosquitoes," said Beeching.

But "we don't know that for sure."

Studies are ongoing to see if other mosquitoes elsewhere may also transmit the virus.

Petersen said there may also be a risk for Africa, where Zika was first identified in 1947, in Uganda.

If the virus had evolved genetically since then, it could mean that people in tropical Africa -- who may have originally enjoyed Zika immunity -- no longer do.

"The latest report I have seen, it was (Zika) described from the Cape Verde islands, which is halfway between Brazil and Africa," he cautioned.

Screening all travellers from South America was "absolutely impossible" and not the solution, Petersen stressed.

"You have I don't know how many planes from South America to Europe every day. And if people knew that they would be screened they would just take a paracetamol half an hour before landing and they would not report" any fever.

by Mariëtte Le Roux

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12 April 2016

Rio's Zika outbreak matches Asian virus, researchers say

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© AFP/File / by Kerry Sheridan | A municipal agent sprays for Zika-carrying mosquitos, at the sambadrome in Rio de Janeiro, on January 25, 2016

MIAMI (AFP) - The mosquito-borne Zika virus behind last year's outbreak in Rio de Janeiro closely resembles another strain from Asia and may have been introduced by Pacific Island athletes, researchers said Tuesday.

Their report in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases offers the first detailed analysis of the outbreak in a Latin American city, and gives further weight to the hypothesis that Zika may have been brought to Brazil by foreign visitors who came to compete in a canoeing championship in late 2014.

The researchers also raised new concerns about the potential for an even worse Zika outbreak during this summer's Olympic Games in Rio, saying many of those studied did not remember being bitten by mosquitoes and that transmission of Zika infection in clusters of people appeared to be commonplace.

"At this point, health services must be alerted to the potential for an even larger epidemic during the summer of 2015?2016 spreading to additional locations and affecting the susceptible proportion of the population that was not exposed during the last transmission season," the study warned.

Zika virus is strongly suspected to be behind a surge in microcephaly, a birth defect in which babies are born with unusually small heads, although a definitive link between microcephaly and Zika has not yet been proven.

Brazil has seen thousands of suspected cases.

While still "speculative," 10 randomly selected samples were "clustered within the Asian genotype," suggesting the virus "was possibly introduced to Rio de Janeiro during the VI World Sprint Championship canoe race in August 2014," the study said.

The race included teams from the Pacific countries of French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Cook Islands and Easter Island, where the virus was present in 2014.

Researchers have yet to confirm the exact route and timeline for Zika's entry into Latin America.

A separate study published last month in the journal Science sequenced the genomes of seven Brazilian Zika samples, taken from March to November 2015, and suggested that Zika may have arrived even earlier, perhaps between May and December 2013, on an inbound flight from French Polynesia or Southeast Asia.

- Challenge to 'northeast' theory -

Another key finding from the PLOS study was evidence of cases in Rio de Janeiro -- the first city with a high proportion of cases confirmed by molecular diagnosis -- as early as January 2015.

Brazilian officials first notified the public of the Zika virus in May 2015.

"Our findings have demonstrated that Zika virus was circulating in Rio de Janeiro at least five months before its detection was announced by the health authorities," said the study, led by Patricia Brasil of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro.

The study is based on a total of 364 patients who suffered an acute skin rash from January through July 2015.

Since Zika is related to viruses that cause dengue fever and chikungunya, and some symptoms can be similar, researchers relied on blood samples available from 262 of the patients to test for the virus.

They confirmed Zika in 119 of the samples. None of those tested had traveled recently, confirming that the infections had been caught locally.

Eleven percent of the cases were diagnosed prior to May 2015, when the virus was first reported in northeast Brazil.

That challenges the theory that the virus entered Brazil from the northeast before spreading to the rest of the country, researchers said.

- Itchy symptoms -

Itchy skin was the second most commonly reported symptom -- present in 79 percent of patients with a confirmed Zika infection -- and the problem lasted for several days.

Currently, itchiness is not listed among the official symptoms of Zika, but it should be added by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), researchers urged.

While fever and rash are formally considered symptoms of Zika, only about one third of confirmed patients recalled experiencing a brief fever at the start of their infection.

Nearly all the patients had a rash.

Other frequent symptoms were exhaustion, headache and joint pain.

Although experts say Zika is primarily transmitted by mosquitoes, just 38 percent of patients remembered having been bitten.

One quarter of confirmed cases came from households where more than one person was infected, suggesting that either mosquito density was very high, or that the virus was passing from person to person, perhaps via sexual contact.

by Kerry Sheridan

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16 April 2016

Peru reports first sexually transmitted Zika case

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© AFP/File | A specialist fumigates for Zika-carrying mosquitoes on the outskirts of Lima, Peru on January 15, 2016

LIMA (AFP) - Peru has suffered its first case of sexually transmitted, locally contracted Zika virus, authorities said Saturday.

Health Minister Anibal Velasquez said that after a woman tested positive for Zika officials went to see if she could have been bitten by a transmitter mosquito at her home.

When they found no mosquito presence, they tested her partner's sperm.

He tested positive for the virus, Velasquez told reporters.

The woman and her partner were treated in hospital and are now healthy, he added.

The virus has been linked to cases of microcephaly in babies born to mothers who have Zika, as well as to Guillain-Barre, a disorder that causes the immune system to attack parts of the nervous system that controls muscle strength.

Brazil, where the Zika virus was first detected in Latin America in early 2015, has had a surge in cases of microcephaly coinciding with the Zika outbreak.

On Thursday, neighboring Colombia reported the country's first two cases of microcephaly associated with Zika.

Some 70,000 clinical cases of Zika have been reported to date in Colombia, and as many as 200,000 cases are expected before the epidemic peaks.

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19 April 2016

Zika mosquito found in Chile, first time in decades

SANTIAGO (AFP) - The species of mosquito that carries the Zika virus has been found in mainland Chile for the first time in six decades, the country's health minister said Monday.

Chile was, with Canada, one of just two states in the Americas said to be free of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries the Zika virus that health authorities say causes birth defects in newborns.

But health minister Carmen Castillo said Monday scientists had identified a specimen of the mosquito in mainland Chile for the first time since the 1960s.

"It is an Aedes aegypti, which means that we have to take more precautions," she said.

The country had previously reported cases of Zika in people who contracted it abroad and one case of it being sexually transmitted in Chile.

Authorities had found Aedes aegypti on the country's remote Easter Island in the Pacific, but not on the mainland, largely protected from mosquitoes by mountains and deserts.

The specimen was found in the northern city of Arica, Castillo said.

Zika has been linked to cases of microcephaly in babies born to infected mothers.

Babies with microcephaly have unusually small heads and damaged brains.

Zika has also been linked to rare neurological diseases in adults.

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Zika virus: Risk higher than first thought, say doctors

By Wyre Davies
BBC News, Rio de Janeiro

2 May 2016

The mosquito-borne Zika virus may be even more dangerous than previously thought, scientists in Brazil say.

They told the BBC that Zika could be behind more damaging neurological conditions, affecting the babies of up to a fifth of infected pregnant women.

Rates of increase in Zika infection in some parts of Brazil have slowed, thanks to better information about preventing the disease.

But the search for a vaccine is still in the early stages.

And Zika continues to spread across the region.

Most doctors and medical researchers now agree that there is a link between the Zika virus and microcephaly, where babies are born with abnormally small heads because of restricted brain development.

While it is estimated that 1% of women who have had Zika during pregnancy will have a child with microcephaly, leading doctors in Brazil have told the BBC that as many as 20% of Zika-affected pregnancies will result in a range of other forms of brain damage to the baby in the womb.

A separate study, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, said that "29% of scans showed abnormalities in babies in the womb, including growth restrictions, in women infected with Zika".

"Our findings are worrisome because 29% of ultrasonograms showed abnormalities, including intrauterine growth restrictions and foetal death, in women with positive Zika infection," the study said.

Many of the conditions that Brazilian doctors are noticing in babies born to mothers who had Zika are not as obvious to the untrained eye as microcephaly.

They may not have the same impact on the child's development either but the frequency with which they are occurring is alarming.

Doctor Renato Sa is a senior obstetrician who works in both public and private hospitals in Rio de Janeiro.

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Dr Renato Sa says there is a long list of other conditions affecting babies born to mothers who had Zika

"There are cerebral calcifications, an increase in the number of dilation of cerebral ventricles and the destruction or malformation of the posterior part of the brain," he says.

In my notebook he makes a list of the conditions that they are now witnessing with increasing regularity; ventriculomegaly, damage of the posterior fossa, craniocynostosis and cerebral calcification.

He says that an added concern is that often there is no obvious sign or symptom of the neurological damage until later observations of the child's development, "perhaps convulsions or other tell-tale signs".

'Shocked'

There is an obvious urgency to understand more about Zika and develop a vaccine.

At the Instituto D'Or laboratories in Rio de Janeiro they are using stem-cell technology to create new cells that develop like human brains.

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Scientists at Instituto D'Or are researching the effects of Zika on brain tissue

They call them "mini brains" and infect them with Zika.

"What we observed is that the Zika virus is able to kill cells, is able to affect the growth of cells," says Dr Stevens Rehen, the unit's senior neuroscientist.

Dr Rehen has noted, as have others, that there is something particularly virulent about the strain of Zika that arrived in Brazil and is presently spreading across the continent.

"There is something in the Zika virus that makes it more prone to kill neurocells during development. Now we need to search and understand what makes that virus more aggressive to the brain under development."

The team was shocked by what it discovered - a huge reduction in growth of the cerebral cortex, the critical outer layer of the brain.

"The effect of the Zika virus was very impressive," says Dr Patricia Garcez.

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Dr Patricia Garcez says her team was astonished by the speed of cell death

"We were all astonished by the fast effect. We saw cell death in three days, a massive cell death. In six days, the neurospheres were completely gone."

In a change to earlier patterns, the areas of greatest infection for Zika are now in the south of the country, particularly in Rio de Janeiro.

Among some sectors of society, public information campaigns about the need for using anti-mosquito repellent and taking other precautions appear to be having a positive impact.

Dr Sa says that the number of Zika cases among middle-class pregnant women has fallen sharply, as have cases of microcephaly and other related conditions.

But he says that the disappointing reality is that such progress is not apparent in the city's many poor working-class neighbourhoods, such as Duque de Caxias in the north of Rio de Janeiro.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


At the scene in Duque de Caxias neighbourhood

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Fabiane Lopes' four-month old daughter Valentina has microcephaly

I met Fabiane Lopes, a single mother of four children whose partner abandoned her when he found out the youngest child was going to be born with microcephaly.

Given her plight - living in a tiny single-room house and dependant on government welfare - Ms Lopes is stoical.

She has to be.

Four-month old Valentina needs all the love, attention and therapy she can get.

"We've seen no anti-Zika campaigns around here," says Ms Lopes, illustrating that government messages about Zika control are not getting through to everyone.

She admits never having used anti-mosquito repellent and not being particularly careful about covering up when she was pregnant.

Ms Lopez clearly loves her little girl, despite the tough start in life that she has been dealt. Her other children help with the chores that an absent father has abrogated.

This is a family and a country is still learning how damaging the Zika virus and its consequences can be.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


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'Bugged mosquitoes' stop Zika spread

By Smitha Mundasad
Health reporter

8 hours ago

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Infecting mosquitoes with bacteria could help stop them spreading Zika, an early Brazilian study suggests.

Scientists deliberately gave mosquitoes the Wolbachia bug and then later exposed them to Zika virus.

They found mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia had less Zika virus in them and in some cases the virus had been deactivated.

They say with more work, the approach could be one way to prevent mosquitoes passing Zika on to humans.

Viral competition

Scientists around the world are working on ways to combat Zika - which has been linked to a rise in brain and skull malformations in babies.

The virus is thought to spread when humans are bitten by mosquitoes carrying Zika.

In this study, researchers from Brazil's Oswaldo Cruz Foundation found mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia (a bacterium that lives in many insects) had fewer copies Zika in their bodies and, crucially, an inactive form of Zika in their saliva.

They say the inactive form of Zika would not be able to cause disease in humans.

Writing in the journal Cell Host and Microbe, the scientists say they are unsure exactly how the overall strategy works but the virus and bacterium may compete for the same resources once inside mosquitoes - and the virus loses out.

They predict mosquitoes with Wolbachia - if released into the wild - would mate with mosquitoes without the bug and, over time, replace the population with Zika-resistant mosquitoes.

But scientists caution this strategy could not be used on its own.

Researcher Dr Luciano Moreira said: "We know that there will not be only one solution for Zika - we have to do this alongside different approaches, like vaccines or insecticides, besides the public measures to control mosquito breeding sites."

Dr Tom Walker, a lecturer at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who has worked on other programmes involving the Wolbachia bug, said this was early but promising work.

He added: "As this work is preliminary and has been done in a laboratory, one of the next steps would be to conduct a large trial outside of the laboratory."

Zika virus disease has been seen in more than 40 countries during the current outbreak.

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06 May 2016

Low-cost Zika test in the works to detect virus in blood, saliva

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© AFP/File | A researcher looks at Aedes aegypti mosquitoes kept in a container at a laboratory in Sao Paulo, Brazil on January 8, 2016

MIAMI (AFP) - Researchers at Harvard University have devised a test to quickly and cheaply detect the Zika virus in blood or saliva, offering a much-needed method for remote testing, a study said Friday.

Public health experts have warned that the lack of standardized diagnostic tests for Zika, which can cause birth defects, presents a major problem for efforts to understand and prevent the disease.

The new test can detect viruses "at significantly lower concentrations than previously possible," said the study by scientists at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering.

The proof-of-concept demonstration showed the tool could work in monkeys, and would cost less than a dollar per patient, according to the findings published in the journal Cell.

The tool shows its results "through a simple 'color-change' assay, which an untrained eye can easily use to evaluate whether Zika is present or not in a biological sample," according to the report.

The CDC has already approved two tests for diagnosing Zika, known as the Zika MAC-ELISA and Trioplex Real-Time RT-PCR Assay.

However, the tests are complicated and sometimes confuse Zika with similar viruses such as West Nile or dengue.

The new test could be available in the next several months, and would "improve upon key limitations of currently available options for Zika detection, such as potential cross-reactivity with closely-related viruses and a lack of specialized skills or equipment to screen for the virus outside of large urban areas," said the report.

Meanwhile, another study unveiled details about how the mosquito-borne Zika virus attacks the brain, killing and shrinking cells and resulting in babies born with unusually small heads, a condition known as microcephaly.

Published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the research was led by scientists at the University of San Diego School of Medicine.

They found that Zika activates an immune receptor -- called TLR3 -- in the brain.

"We all have an innate immune system that evolved specifically to fight off viruses, but here the virus turns that very same defense mechanism against us," said senior author Tariq Rana, professor of pediatrics at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

"By activating TLR3, the Zika virus blocks genes that tell stem cells to develop into the various parts of the brain," added Rana.

"The good news is that we have TLR3 inhibitors that can stop this from happening."

More research is needed to find out how this approach could be used, and whether it could prevent brain damage in infected fetuses.

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Zika virus 'shrinks brains' in tests

By James Gallagher
Health editor, BBC News website

5 hours ago

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Zika virus can enter the brains of mice in the womb to stunt development, the first animal tests show.

The trio of studies provide crucial experimental evidence that backs up fears the virus is behind the surge in babies born with small heads in Brazil.

They showed the virus could cross the placenta during pregnancy and kill cells to slow brain growth.

Experts said the findings add to the weight of evidence, but studies in animals with bigger brains were needed.

There have been around 1,300 confirmed cases of microcephaly - babies born with small brains - in Brazil, with thousands more under investigation.

The timing and location of Zika infections and microcephaly led to the World Health Organization declaring a global health emergency.

Chinese scientists injected the Asian strain of Zika, which is closely related to the one circulating in south America, into the brains of mice foetuses 13 days after fertilisation.

The results, published in Cell Stem Cell, found the developing brain was smaller five days later.

Neural progenitor cells, which build the brain and nervous system, were particularly vulnerable to infection but the study showed "almost all cells in the brain" tested positive for Zika.

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Dr Zhiheng Xu, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: "The most surprising part of this study is that it was mostly neural progenitor cells that got infected in the beginning and mostly neurons that became infected at a later stage.

"However, almost all cell death was found in neurons."

Meanwhile scientists at Washington University have performed the first animal experiments showing how the infection spreads from a pregnant adult to the developing foetus.

It showed Zika preferentially targeted the placenta with viral levels 1,000 times higher than in the blood.

Their study, in Cell, found the virus damaged the placenta and was able to leak over to the foetus.

And a study, published in Nature, used the virus currently spreading in Brazil in animal tests. Again the research team showed mouse brain development was impaired.

Dr Alysson Muotri, one of the researchers in the third study from the University of California San Diego, said: "The media and some of the health agencies were ahead of themselves by concluding the Zika virus was causing microcephaly.

"Experimental and clinical proof that Brazilian circulating Zika virus causes microcephaly is only being presented now."

Dr Derek Gatherer, from Lancaster University, said the findings "add to the weight of evidence that Zika virus is the cause of the apparent spike in microcephaly".

"However, the differences between mouse and human development mean that larger experimental animals that are more similar to humans - such as monkeys - must also be tested. "

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13 May 2016

Puerto Rico declares first case of Zika-related microcephaly

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© AFP/File | The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had "confirmed the first case of Zika virus disease in a fetus in Puerto Rico" after conducting laboratory tests

MIAMI (AFP) - Puerto Rican health authorities on Friday announced the first case of Zika-related microcephaly in a fetus, as the US territory grapples with the spread of the mosquito-borne virus.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had "confirmed the first case of Zika virus disease in a fetus in Puerto Rico" after conducting laboratory tests and sharing the results with the Puerto Rican health department.

"This case of Zika virus disease in a pregnancy saddens and concerns us as it highlights the potential for additional cases and associated adverse pregnancy outcomes," said a CDC statement.

Zika can cause the birth defect microcephaly, and 1,271 babies in Brazil have been born with unusually small heads and deformed brains since the outbreak of Zika began there last year.

Zika-related deformities have killed 57 of those infants since October, and another 178 are suspected to have died from the virus and the defects it causes, Brazilian officials said earlier this month.

Puerto Rican Health Secretary Ana Rius gave few details about the island's first case of microcephaly, saying she wanted to honor the family's right to privacy.

The fetus "showed severe microcephaly and calcifications in the brain accompanied by the presence of the Zika virus," she said.

"We have been expecting this news for some time. Having robust surveillance systems allowed us to detect this case early."

Puerto Rico said it has counted 925 cases of Zika so far, 18 of which involve pregnant women.

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Scientists clone Zika for vaccine race

By Michelle Roberts
Health editor, BBC News online

7 hours ago

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US scientists have cloned the Zika virus - an important step towards fast-tracking a vaccine against the disease.

The man-made copy is a replica of the strain that is spreading across the Americas and has been linked to brain deformities in newborn babies.

In tests at the University of Texas, the clone could infect mosquitoes - the carrier of Zika - and cause disease in laboratory mice.

Experts say they can use this in experiments to design a good vaccine.

It is hoped a candidate will be ready for testing in the coming months.

But it could be many years before there is a safe and effective jab that can be offered to the general public.

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Zika can cause serious harm to unborn babies, but it often has no visible symptoms in the mother.
Experts say a vaccine to protect expectant women, and others at high risk of infection, is one of the most effective ways we have of beating it.

Many different research groups around the world are working to make such a vaccine.

The US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases hopes to start human clinical trials on its ​vaccine candidate by September.

What's needed is a "safe" version of Zika that will be enough to make the body ward off the infection without actually causing disease.

The University of Texas team say their cloned virus should help with achieving this.

They have published their findings in the journal Cell Host & Microbe.

Until now, researchers had known the structure of Zika, but they had not replicated it - at least not this strain.

UK expert Dr Tom Blanchard, from Manchester University, is using a safe derivative of an existing smallpox vaccine to try to make a new antidote for Zika.

He said: "The challenge for people like us who are developing vaccines is to separate out the harmful effects of the virus from the beneficial effects. We want to have something that will replicate but will not cause damage.

"Research such as this could help."

Prof Polly Roy of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said: "This is good. Scientists have everything to play around with now."

She said that as well as designing a vaccine, researchers would also be able to test antiviral drugs that might lessen the effects of Zika if someone was already infected.

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Zika virus may reach Europe this summer

By Smitha Mundasad
Health reporter

9 hours ago

The Zika virus could spread to Europe this summer, although the likelihood of an outbreak is low to moderate, the World Health Organization has said.

Areas most at risk are those where Aedes mosquitoes may spread the virus, like the Black Sea coast of Russia and Georgia and the island of Madeira.

Countries with a moderate risk include France, Spain, Italy and Greece, while the risk in the UK is low.

The UN agency is not issuing any new travel advice at this time.

The WHO is calling on countries to eliminate mosquito breeding sites and to make sure that people - particularly pregnant women - have information on the potential harmful consequences of the disease.

The agency says most countries that could be affected are well prepared to pick up any new cases and deal with them quickly - but others must bolster their ability to diagnose the virus.

Brain defects

Zika has been linked to a rise in brain defects in babies and the virus has been seen in more than 50 countries during this outbreak.

And WHO experts say the risk of spread increases in late spring and summer as Aedes mosquitoes - thought to carry the virus - become more active.

The report suggests 18 countries are at moderate likelihood of seeing Zika cases while the UK is one of 36 countries which have a low, very low or no likelihood of transmission.

Dr Zsuzsanna Jakab, at the WHO, said: "We call particularly on countries at higher risk to strengthen their national capacities and prioritise the activities that will prevent a large Zika outbreak."

Meanwhile Prof Jimmy Whitworth, at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said the the risk of Zika spreading to Europe was real and called for holidaymakers to heed health advice.

He added: "The main mosquito vector for Zika, Aedes aegypti, is only found in Madeira and around the Black Sea, but another mosquito, Aedes albopictus, is more widespread and is capable of transmitting Zika, although not very efficiently.

"Countries in Southern Europe, including France and Italy, need to be especially vigilant and it's important that holidaymakers follow public health advice while abroad, including taking all the necessary precautions to avoid getting bitten.

"This is especially so for pregnant women, or women planning to become pregnant, travelling to areas where there is Zika, as there is now a proven link with microcephaly and other birth defects."

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Nearly 300 pregnant women in US test positive for Zika

3 hours ago

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The Zika virus is especially dangerous for pregnant women

Nearly 300 pregnant women in the US have tested positive for Zika virus, according to the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In the US, 157 pregnant women have tested positive for the disease and 122 have tested positive in US territories.

Until now, the agency had not reported the number of women infected by the diseases in the US and its territories.

A Zika-related case has been reported on the Caribbean island of Martinique.

A regional health agency said on Friday an 84-year-old patient with Guillain Barre Syndrome who had been in the hospital for 10 days died.

Some experts think there is a link between the syndrome and Zika virus.

The virus is spread through mosquitoes and sexual contact.

It can cause microcephaly, a birth defect, marked by a small head size and can lead to developmental problems in infants.

Symptoms of Zika virus include mild fever, conjunctivitis, headache, joint pain and rashes.

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Death from the disease is rare and there is no vaccine or drug treatment available.

In Los Angeles, officials are taking prevention measures against Zika after health officials warned that outbreaks could be expected in Southern California.

The outbreak began nearly a year ago in Brazil.

The World Health Organization has said Zika virus could spread to Europe this summer.

"Everything we know about this virus seems to be scarier than we initially thought," Dr Anne Schuchat of the CDC said in April.

Earlier this year, US President Barack Obama asked the US Congress for $1.9bn (£1.25bn) in emergency funding to combat the virus.

In the meantime it has been using money totalling $589m left over from the Ebola virus fund.

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Zika virus strain 'imported from the Americas' to Africa

7 hours ago

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The Zika virus strain responsible for the outbreaks in Brazil has been detected in Africa for the first time, the World Health Organization says.

The WHO said it was concerned that the latest strain was spreading and was "on the doorstep of Africa".

It is currently circulating in Cape Verde, an archipelago off the north west coast of Africa.

Zika has been linked to neurological disorders including babies being born with small brains.

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, WHO Regional Director for Africa, said: "This information will help African countries to re-evaluate their level of risk and adapt and increase their levels of preparedness."

Protection

She said African countries should raise awareness among pregnant women of the complications with the Zika virus and encourage people to protect themselves against mosquito bites and sexual transmission.

But she said she would not recommend strict travel restrictions to try to stop the spread of the disease.

There have been more than 7,000 suspected cases of Zika in Cape Verde, with 180 pregnant women thought to have been infected.

The WHO says three babies have been born brain damaged with microcephaly.

Until the virus was sequenced by scientists in Senegal, it was not certain if the outbreak in Cape Verde was caused by the African or Asian type, which has hit Brazil and other Latin American countries.

Tests show that this is the Asian strain - the same as the one blamed for birth abnormalities in Brazil.

There have been around 1,300 confirmed cases of microcephaly - babies born with small brains - in Brazil, with thousands more under investigation.

A UK researcher said the Zika virus has been circulating at a low level in African countries for more than 50 years, so some of the population may already be immune.

"It is likely that the South American, Caribbean and Polynesian populations had no prior immunity to the virus, so a high proportion of people who are bitten by infected mosquitos caught the disease," said Dr Anna Checkley, of the Hospital for Tropical Diseases, University College London Hospitals.

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Obama pushes for more Zika funding in US

21 May 2016

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President Barack Obama has criticised the US Congress for failing to back his request for a $1.9bn (£1.25bn) fund to combat the spreading Zika virus.

He warned that the country could face "bigger problems" in the future.

His comments come as the latest figures showed that there were nearly 300 pregnant women in the US who had tested positive for Zika.

The virus is thought to cause serious birth defects.

It is spread through mosquitoes and sexual contact.

The World Health Organization has declared the Zika virus a global public health emergency.

It can cause microcephaly, a birth defect, marked by a small head size and can lead to developmental problems in infants.

There have been around 1,300 confirmed cases of microcephaly in Brazil, with thousands more under investigation.

Symptoms of Zika virus include mild fever, conjunctivitis, headache, joint pain and rashes.

Obama's warning

On Friday, President Obama said the Senate had agreed to only half of the required funding, and the House of Representatives only a third.

He said that even this money ($589m) had been diverted from funds earmarked to tackle the threat of Ebola .

"This is not something where we can build a wall to prevent (the spreading of Zika), mosquitoes don't go through customs, to the extent that we're not handling this thing on the front end, we're going to have bigger problems on the back end," Mr Obama said.

Meanwhile, the latest figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that 157 pregnant women had tested positive for Zika and another 122 in US territories.

Until now, the agency had not reported the number of women infected by the diseases in the US and its territories.

A Zika-related case has been reported on the French Caribbean island of Martinique.

A regional health agency said on Friday an 84-year-old patient with Guillain Barre Syndrome who had been in the hospital for 10 days died.

Death from the disease is rare and there is no vaccine or drug treatment available.

In Los Angeles, officials are taking prevention measures against Zika after health officials warned that outbreaks could be expected in southern California.

The outbreak began nearly a year ago in Brazil.

The World Health Organization has said Zika virus could spread to Europe this summer.

"Everything we know about this virus seems to be scarier than we initially thought," Dr Anne Schuchat of the CDC said in April.

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Zika outbreak fuelled by mosquito control failure, says WHO boss

7 hours ago

The spread of Zika is the price being paid for a massive policy failure on mosquito control, says World Health Organization leader Margaret Chan.

Speaking at the agency's annual World Health Assembly, Dr Chan said experts had "dropped the ball" in the 1970s with regards to getting a handle on disease-carrying insects.

More than 60 countries and territories now have continuing Zika transmission.

Most recently, the infection, spread by mosquito bites, reached Africa.

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Experts predict the same strain could reach Europe in the summer.

The virus is thought to cause serious birth defects during pregnancy and has been declared a global public health emergency.

According to Dr Chan, outbreaks that become emergencies always reveal specific weaknesses in affected countries and illuminate the fault lines in our collective preparedness.

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"Zika reveals an extreme consequence of the failure to provide universal access to sexual and family planning services," she said.

Dr Chan added that Latin America and the Caribbean, which have been hit hard by Zika, have the highest proportion of unintended pregnancies in the world.

Above all, she said the spread of Zika was "the price being paid for a massive policy failure that dropped the ball on mosquito control in the 1970s".

Eradication campaigns were successful in the Americas with 18 countries getting rid of the insect by 1962.

But insecticide resistance plus a lack of political will led to the Aedes aegypti mosquito rebounding.

"With no vaccines and no reliable and widely available diagnostic tests, to protect women of childbearing age, all we can offer is advice.

"Avoid mosquito bites. Delay pregnancy. Do not travel to areas with ongoing transmission," said Dr Chan.

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Concern Zika causes baby eye problems

25 May 2016

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Scientists studying the Zika outbreak in Brazil are becoming increasingly concerned the virus may cause eye damage in babies.

Stanford University researchers found abnormal bleeding and lesions in the eyes of three infant boys whose mothers had caught Zika while pregnant.

They want any babies known to be affected by Zika to have eye checks.

The journal of Ophthalmology findings follow another recent study that saw similar eye problems in Zika babies.

The disease is already known to cause a serious baby brain defect called microcephaly.

What is not clear is whether eye problems might be a complication of this rather than the Zika infection itself.

Either is possible.

All of the three infants the researchers from Stanford and the University of Sao Paulo examined also had microcephaly.

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The image shows abnormal bleeds, known as haemorrhages, in the retina (the back of the eye)

The eye damage they found in the baby boys was to the light-sensitive layer of tissue at the back of the eye, called the retina.

There was abnormal blood vessel growth, bleeding and torpedo-shaped lesions.

Researcher Dr Darius Moshfeghi said the next step was to determine the root cause - Zika or microcephaly - to better understand which infants would need eye checks.

"To begin with it's probably sensible just to screen babies with microcephaly," he said.

"But if it turns out that Zika can cause these eye problems independently, then we would need to screen all infants of infected mothers."

He said some of the eye abnormalities would resolve or be treatable, but others could cause lasting, irreversible damage to vision.

With no vaccine or treatment, pregnant women have been advised to cover up to protect themselves against the biting mosquitoes that carry Zika.

More than 60 countries and territories now have continuing Zika transmission.

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Zika crisis: Rio Olympics 'should be moved or postponed'

2 hours ago

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The Rio Olympics take place in August this year

More than 100 leading scientists say the Rio Olympics should be moved or postponed over the Zika outbreak.

The group says new findings about the virus make it "unethical" for the games to go ahead in an open letter to the World Health Organization.

They call on the WHO to revisit its guidance on Zika, which is linked to serious birth defects.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said in May it sees no reason to delay or move the games due to Zika.

The outbreak of the mosquito-borne disease began in Brazil a year ago, but now more than 60 countries and territories have continuing transmission.

While Zika's symptoms are mild, in the letter the experts say it causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and may also cause a rare and sometimes fatal neurological syndrome in adults.

The letter is signed by 150 international scientists, doctors and medical ethicists from such institutions as Oxford University and Harvard and Yale universities in the United States.

They cite the failure of a mosquito-eradication programme in Brazil, and the country's "weakened" health system as reasons to postpone or move the Olympics in "the name of public health".

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"An unnecessary risk is posed when 500,000 foreign tourists from all countries attend the Games, potentially acquire that strain, and return home to places where it can become endemic," the letter says.

The biggest risk, it adds, is if athletes contracted the virus and returned home to poor countries that had not yet suffered a Zika outbreak.

They also express concern the WHO has a conflict of interest through its partnership with the IOC.

The Rio Olympics take place between 5-21 August.

The WHO, which has declared the Zika virus a global public health emergency, is yet to comment on the letter.

Several public health experts had previously warned that having hundreds of thousands of people arriving in Rio will speed up Zika's spread and lead to the births of brain-damaged babies.

But on Thursday, the head of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose advice is quoted approvingly in the letter, said the threat did not warrant halting the games.

"There is no public health reason to cancel or delay the Olympics," Dr Tom Frieden said.

He however urged the US to act more quickly to prevent pregnant women contracting Zika, amid congressional deadlock over the release of $1.9bn (£1.3bn) in funding.

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Zika crisis: WHO seeks to allay fears over Rio Olympics

4 hours ago

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Brazil has send teams to eradicate mosquitoes that carry the Zika virus

The World Health Organization (WHO) has played down concerns over the spread of the Zika virus, amid calls for the Rio Olympics in August to be postponed.

Senior WHO official Bruce Aylward told the BBC that risk assessment plans were in place, and reiterated that there was no need to delay the Games.

The mayor of Rio said disease-carrying mosquitoes were being eradicated.

The officials were responding to an open letter by scientists saying it was "unethical" for the Games to go ahead.

The letter also said the global health body should revisit its Zika guidance.

The Zika virus is linked to severe birth defects.

Between February and April, Brazil registered more than 90,000 likely cases of Zika.

The number of babies born with Zika-linked defects stood at 4,908 in April.

Dr Aylward, who heads the WHO's emergency programme, told the BBC that it was already carrying out a risk-assessment programme "about this disease and the risks it poses both to individuals who get and those who might be subsequently exposed".

In addition, he said, independent experts had reported to the WHO on the implications of the outbreak for travel and trade.

"Those are two of the exact measures that that group has asked for and that is exactly what is being done, and clearly we need to have better communicated that."

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Challenge for the IOC - Dan Roan, Sports Editor, BBC News

The World Health Organization is key here.

As long as it continues to reject pleas to cancel or move the Games from Rio, the IOC will feel confident.

No contingency plans are being put in place should the doomsday scenario occur.

And privately, the IOC seems more concerned by the doping crisis; allegations of state-sponsored cheating at the 2014 Sochi Games, and the question mark over the participation of Russian athletes in Rio, than it is by Zika.

But if the WHO changes its tune, the IOC would be left facing one of the biggest challenges in its history.

Two years ago, it had to bar young athletes from the Ebola-affected region of West Africa from participating in certain events at the Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China, to rule out infection.

But this would be on a whole different scale.

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has said it sees no reason to delay or move the Games because of the mosquito-borne disease.

Mr Aylward said that a call to postpone the Games could not be ruled out in the future, but added: "All the information available today... suggests that the games should definitely go ahead."

He restated the WHO's warning that women who are pregnant or seek to get pregnant should not travel to the Zika zone or be exposed to returning partners who may have been infected.

Postponing the games, at this stage, would only "compromise the huge investment that athletes and others have made in preparing for what should be a fantastic occasion."

In their open letter, the 150 scientists said Brazil's mosquito-eradication programme had failed.

They cited this, and the country's "weakened" health system, as reasons to postpone or move the Olympics.

In his reply, Rio Mayor Eduardo da Costa Paes said:

- The city has over 3,000 health officials monitoring the presence of mosquitoes across Rio

- Inspections will be stepped up in August, a time of year when there are anyway fewer mosquitoes

- A team of eradicators will start focusing on Olympic venues a month before the Games.

Zika infection in pregnant women has been shown to be a cause of microcephaly and other brain abnormalities in babies.

In February, the WHO declared recent outbreaks of those diseases in Latin America and French Polynesia a global health emergency requiring a united response.

It said stepping up programmes to eradicate mosquitoes that spread the Zika virus were a priority.

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Zika virus: Risk of spread from Olympics 'very low' says WHO

2 hours ago

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Some scientists warned earlier against going ahead with the Rio Olympics

The World Health Organization (WHO) says there is a "very low risk" of Zika virus spreading globally as a result of holding the Olympics in Brazil.

There is no need to move the Olympics from Rio de Janeiro, or to postpone or cancel them, WHO experts said.

The WHO reaffirmed earlier advice against imposing any travel or trade restrictions on areas affected by the virus, which is spread by mosquitoes.

Zika has been linked to birth defects. The Olympics will be held in August.

The WHO has already declared Zika a global public health emergency.

It has advised pregnant women to avoid travelling to the Games, and visitors to take precautions to avoid mosquito bites.

But despite the concern voiced by some scientists, the WHO said mosquito activity was relatively low in Brazil in August.

Brazilian officials expect about 380,000 foreign visitors to come for the Rio Olympics.

Millions of travellers already visit Brazil every year, so not holding the Olympics there would not reduce the numbers significantly, the WHO added.

The outbreak began in Brazil a year ago, but now more than 60 countries and territories have continuing transmission.

More than 1,400 cases of microcephaly in babies have been linked to Zika in Brazil.

The babies were born with abnormally small heads, a condition threatening their brain development.

The virus has also been linked to a rare nervous system disorder, Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Last month 150 doctors, scientists and bioethicists from more than a dozen countries signed an open letter urging the WHO to consider postponing or moving the Rio Olympics because of the spread of Zika.

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Abortion demand 'soars' amid Zika fear

By James Gallagher
Health editor, BBC News website

23 June 2016

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Fears over the Zika virus have contributed to a "huge" increase in the number of women in Latin America wanting abortions, researchers say.

Estimates suggest there has been at least a doubling in requests in Brazil and an increase of a third in other countries.

Many governments have advised women not to get pregnant due to the risk of babies being born with tiny brains.

The findings were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Sixty countries and territories have reported cases of Zika being spread by mosquitoes.

More than 1,500 babies have been diagnosed with microcephaly caused by the virus.

A termination remains illegal in many parts of Latin America, but women simply turn to unofficial providers.

Women on Web, which advises women online and then delivers pills to end a pregnancy, is one of the largest.

The researchers analysed the thousands of requests received by Women on Web in the five years before the Pan American Health Organization issued its warning on Zika on 17 November 2015.

It used this to predict how many abortion requests would have been expected between 17 November 2015 and 1 March 2016.

The analysis of countries that advised against getting pregnant suggested Brazil and Ecuador had had more than twice the expected demand for abortions.


Country Expected Actual Increase

Brazil 582 1210 +108%

Colombia 102 141 +39%

Costa Rica 49 67 +36%

El Salvador 18 24 +36%

Ecuador 34 71 +108%

Honduras 21 36 +76%

Venezuela 45 86 +93%


Analysis from other countries, which did not advise against pregnancy, suggested smaller increases in abortion demand.

One woman from Peru told Women on Web: "I'm very concerned, I'm two months pregnant and in my country Zika has been detected.

"We are all very alarmed and I do not want have a sick baby, please, I do not want to continue my pregnancy because it is very dangerous."

Another from Venezuela said: "I contracted Zika four days ago.

"I love children, but I don't believe it is a wise decision to keep a baby who will suffer. I need an abortion. I don't know who to turn to. Please help me ASAP."

'Tremendous surge'

Dr Catherine Aiken, one of the researchers, from the University of Cambridge, told the BBC News website: "Everywhere governments said, 'Don't get pregnant' and there was Zika transmission, there was a tremendous surge in the number of women taking matters into their own hands.

"There were huge increases in abortions across the region."

Dr Aiken criticised the countries' "very hollow" messages to delay pregnancy that had generated "fear, anxiety and panic with no means to act on it".

Meanwhile Abigail Aiken, an assistant professor from the University of Texas at Austin, said: "Accurate data on the choices pregnant women make in Latin America is hard to obtain.

"If anything, our approach may underestimate the impact of health warning on requests for abortion, as many women may have used an unsafe method or visited local underground providers."

Prof Jimmy Whitworth, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the report "agrees with what I have heard informally from several sources in Latin America about increased interest in finding out more, and in making requests for abortions".

He told the BBC: "This apparent increase in making requests for abortion looks plausible and is not surprising given the situation with the epidemic and societal pressures."

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Scientists discover antibodies that ‘neutralise’ Zika virus

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© An Aedes Aegypti mosquito, which carries the Zika virus, photographed at a laboratory of control of epidemiological vectors in San Salvador on January 27, 2016

2016-06-23

European scientists announced Thursday they had discovered antibodies which attack Zika, a step they hope will pave the way for a protective vaccine against the brain-damaging virus.

The antibodies – frontline soldiers in the immune system – "efficiently neutralise" Zika in human cells in lab dishes, and are also effective against its cousin virus dengue, the team reported.

The discovery "could lead to the development of a universal vaccine" against both diseases, they hoped.

The Zika-zapping molecules were obtained from people who had previously been infected with dengue and whose immune systems had produced antibodies to fight that disease.

"The antibodies could be used, for example, to protect pregnant women at risk of contracting the Zika virus," said Felix Rey, a virology expert at France's Institut Pasteur who co-authored twin studies in Nature and Nature Immunology.

"We never expected to discover that the dengue virus and the Zika virus are so close that some antibodies produced against the dengue virus could also neutralise the Zika virus so potently," he added.

But Rey cautioned that a working vaccine is likely far off.

"There is a lot still to be done, notably to conduct a clinical trial. This may take some time."

Benign in most people, Zika has been linked to a form of severe brain damage, called microcephaly, in babies, and to rare adult-onset neurological problems such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can result in paralysis and death.

In an outbreak that started last year, about 1.5 million people have been infected with Zika in Brazil, out of a global total of some two million, and more than 1,600 babies born with abnormally small heads and brains.

Not all antibodies work

Zika and dengue are both transmitted by the Aedes mosquito, and are members of the same family of Flaviviridae viruses.

While there is no drug for Zika, a vaccine does exist for dengue which causes flu-like symptoms such as fever, headache, nausea, vomiting, muscle pain, and skin rashes similar to measles.

In one percent of cases it cases a deadly haemorrhagic fever which kills about 22,000 people a year, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Dengue is endemic in Brazil.

Worryingly, the same researchers found in lab experiments that apart from the two Zika-killing antibodies, the majority of other molecules active against dengue may actually increase Zika's potency.

This suggested that previous exposure to dengue virus "may enhance Zika infection," said Gavin Screaton of Imperial College London, another of the study authors.

"This may be why the current outbreak has been so severe, and why it has been in areas where dengue is prevalent."

This finding highlighted the importance of using the correct antibodies in a Zika vaccine, said Rey.

Antibodies are proteins produced by the body to identify and latch onto invader viruses, making them easy for the immune system to identify and destroy.

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Zika vaccine 'works very well' in mice

By Michelle Roberts
Health editor, BBC News online

7 hours ago

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A single dose of an experimental vaccine can protect mice against the Zika virus, raising renewed hope of a vaccine for humans, say scientists.

The US team say the results, published in Nature, are "striking" and should "galvanise" research efforts.

Tests in humans could begin in months.

But even if these go well, a licensed vaccine for widespread use to protect those at most risk - such as pregnant women - would still be years away, experts advise.

Urgent need

Zika has been spreading across Central and South America and, most recently, Africa.

More than 60 countries and territories now have continuing transmission of the disease, which is carried by mosquitoes.

The virus causes serious birth defects during pregnancy and has been declared a global public health emergency.

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A baby from Brazil who has microcephaly - a birth defect linked to Zika

Developing a vaccine for pregnant women to protect their unborn babies is an international research priority.

Zika jab

US scientists from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School tested two types of Zika vaccine in mice - one based on bits of genetic code from the virus and another that is an inactive (and therefore harmless) replica of Zika.

Both worked well, protecting every mouse that was immunised against the virus.

In comparison, all of the mice not given the vaccine caught Zika after they were exposed to it.

The WRAIR says it will push ahead with developing the purified inactivated virus vaccine, because this approach is well chartered ground - there are many existing vaccines for other disease that use this type of technology, whereas there are relatively few DNA-based vaccines.

Future tests will need to check the vaccine is safe and effective in humans, as well as how long the immunity might last.

Researcher Dr Dan Barouch said: "There's a lot of unknowns.

"With the preclinical demonstration of efficacy of these Zika virus vaccines, then we hope that this news will electrify and galvinise the vaccine effort against Zika virus."

Other researchers have been testing what effect Zika infection has on the immune system of monkeys.

They have shown that once the animals have recovered from the infection, they have lasting immunity against the disease - at least for the few months the researchers have been able to observe to date.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers say this is good news for vaccine developers.

Lead researcher Prof David O'Connor said: "It suggests the sort of immunity that occurs naturally is sufficient.

"If you can mimic that in a vaccine, you'll likely have a very successful vaccine."

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But other experts are more cautious.

Prof Jonathan Ball, from the UK's Nottingham University, said there were potential risks with the vaccine that needed addressing.

"These studies clearly show us that the vaccine is able to generate antibodies that protect the mice from Zika infection," he said.

"However, it is also possible that the vaccine might produce antibodies that also recognise other viruses from the same family, like Dengue virus for example.

"The real worry is that these cross-reactive antibodies may actually enhance the infection of the other viruses, potentially causing very severe disease."

Prof Peter Openshaw, from the British Society for Immunology, said it was important to move to human studies as soon as possible.

"By the time human vaccines are ready, many of the vulnerable population will have already been naturally infected," he said.

"The purpose of vaccination will presumably be to protect travellers and those wishing to become pregnant.

"It will be vital to see how vaccines will work in such situations and how the practical and economic barriers to vaccine deployment can be overcome."

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30 June 2016

New Zika diagnostics needed for babies, researchers say

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© AFP/File / by Mariette Le Roux | The mosquito-borne Zika virus has been linked to microcephaly -- a shrinking of the brain and skull -- in babies

PARIS (AFP) - Two studies of newborns in Zika-stricken Brazil yielded meagre clues Wednesday about the mysterious workings of the virus, and prompted researchers to call for better tests to identify brain-damaged babies.

Some infants with brain abnormalities may not be diagnosed because they have normal-sized heads instead of the tell-tale small skulls of those born with Zika-linked microcephaly, said one of the papers published by The Lancet.

More than 100 babies who had "definitely or probably" been infected with Zika in the womb, turned out to have normal-sized heads in a recent study, researchers said.

The skull is fully developed by about week 30 of pregnancy, which lasts some 40 weeks.

This meant that "newborns infected with the virus late in pregnancy may go unreported due to their head size being within normal range," said study co-author Cesar Victora of the Federal University of Pelotas.

Also, many of the affected infants' mothers had not had the pregnancy rash sometimes indicative of Zika infection.

Benign in most people, the mosquito-borne virus has been linked to microcephaly -- a shrinking of the brain and skull -- in babies, and to rare adult-onset neurological problems such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can result in paralysis and death.

In an outbreak that started last year, about 1.5 million people have been infected with Zika in Brazil, and more than 1,600 babies born with abnormally small heads and brains.

Existing diagnostics, such as skull measurements or checking for a rash, were not enough to detect all Zika-affected children, said the team.

As a result, some may be living with brain damage that will only become apparent much later.

Doctors should also screen for other signs of brain abnormalities, using ultrasound brain examinations, for example, Victora told AFP.

And, "we need to improve the detection of Zika virus infection on the blood".

- Second wave -

The authors speculated that babies may develop brain damage from an infection that occurs even after birth.

"Zika affects the growing brain, and brain growth does not stop at birth but continues throughout infancy," said Victora.

"If a foetus infected in the last trimester of pregnancy can suffer brain damage, couldn't a newborn who is infected by a mosquito also be affected?"

No such case has yet been reported, "but I think it is possible that this will happen," the scientist said.

With a new wave of Zika virus infections in southeast Brazil early this year, there could soon be a second wave of microcephaly births, the authors added.

A second study added to the growing body of evidence linking the virus to birth defects.

It reported finding Zika in the brain tissue of three dead babies with severe brain damage, and the placenta of two miscarriages.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has concluding that Zika causes microcephaly, even though there have only been a handful of studies to confirm the presence of Zika in foetuses or babies with birth defects.

A lot more research is needed, said the authors, to determine how the virus works and what it does.

by Mariette Le Roux

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02 July 2016

Guinea-Bissau records first three cases of Zika

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© AFP/File | Zika is benign in most people but has been linked to microcephaly -- a shrinking of the brain and skull -- in babies, and to rare adult-onset neurological problems

BISSAU (AFP) - Guinea-Bissau has recorded three cases of Zika, becoming the second country in West Africa where the dangerous viral disease has been detected, the government said on Saturday.

"Three cases of contamination by Zika virus have been confirmed," a statement quoted Health Minister Domingos Malu as saying.

The cases occurred in the Bijagos archipelago, a group of 88 islands of which 23 are inhabited, Malu told a cabinet meeting on Friday.

The communique gave no further detail about the three cases, their location or how the disease may have arrived on the Bijagos.

A hospital source told AFP that investigations were underway but the first case may have occurred early last month on Bubaque, one of the Bijagos islands.

A former Portuguese colony of 1.6 million people, Guinea-Bissau suffers from chronic poverty and instability.

Previously, the only other country in West Africa where Zika had been detected was Cape Verde, an archipelago in the Atlantic, where 7,500 cases have been recorded since October 2015.

Saturday's statement said the authorities were taking steps to prevent further spread of the mosquito-borne virus.

It announced that an anti-Zika commission had been set up, comprising several ministers under the authority of Prime Minister Baciro Dja.

Zika is benign in most people but has been linked to microcephaly -- a shrinking of the brain and skull -- in babies, and to rare adult-onset neurological problems such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can result in paralysis and death.

In an outbreak that started last year, about 1.5 million people have been infected with Zika in Brazil, and more than 1,600 babies born with abnormally small heads and brains.

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