Diamond leads one of two research teams at Wash U that have shifted a significant portion of their work to
studying Zika.
The US National Institutes of Health was asked to fund so - called «human challenge trials», which would involve healthy volunteers being Read more about Ethical dilemma of
studying Zika in humans - Scimex
However,
studying Zika in mice with compromised immune systems could skew results.
He returned to St. Louis and shifted several members of his lab to
studying Zika, including developing mouse models of the disease.
«Our research is the first to
study Zika infection in a mouse model that transmits the virus in a way similar to humans,» explains Alysson R. Muotri, Ph.D., professor and director of the Stem Cell Program at UC San Diego and co-senior author of the study.
But researchers who have
studied Zika and the mosquitoes that transmit it say that the country is currently in the calm before the calm.
And until media attention surged recently, there had been little interest or research funding available to
study Zika virus.
National Institutes of Health (NIH) scientists have developed a mouse model to
study Zika virus transmitted sexually from males to females, as well as vertically from a pregnant female to her fetus.
O'Connor is walking the walk: his laboratory
studies the Zika virus in primates, and he immediately posts all the results online.
There is an urgent need for better animal models for laboratory research to
study the Zika virus and potential treatments.
But the mice eventually recover from the infection, so they provide an opportunity to
study Zika's long - term effects as well as another way to assess experimental vaccines and treatments, the scientists said.
Not exact matches
In a new
study published Tuesday in the BMJ, Brazilian researchers reported for the first time a link between
Zika and arthrogryposis, a severe joint condition that's present at birth.
Earlier on Friday, U.S. health officials published a
study estimating that as many as 270 babies in Puerto Rico may be born with the severe birth defect known as microcephaly caused by
Zika infections in their mothers during pregnancy.
In 1947, scientists
studying yellow fever put a rhesus monkey in a cage on a tree in Uganda's
Zika Forest.
In a bit of positive news, a new
study by the CDC (Centers for Disease Control) shows fewer dangerous effects for babies and children who contract
Zika after they are born.
The new
study tests the effects of four other viruses: the two flaviviruses and two alphaviruses, chikungunya and Mayaro, which also have led to outbreaks in
Zika - affected areas.
A 2006
study of 77 pregnant women infected with West Nile virus reported that two had infants with microcephaly, the birth defect lately associated with
Zika that results in unusually small and damaged brains.
Zhou, who is the director of virology and molecular biology for Microbac Laboratories, headquartered in Pittsburgh, Penn., said the
study did not yet look at the survivability of
Zika on hard non-porous surfaces beyond eight hours.
«
Zika can survive on hard, non-porous surfaces for as long as eight hours, possibly longer when the environment contains blood, which is more likely to occur in the real world,» said the
study's lead researcher S. Steve Zhou, Ph.D. «The good news is that we found that disinfectants such as isopropyl alcohol and quaternary ammonium / alcohol are generally effective in killing the virus in this type of environment and can do so in a little as 15 seconds.»
Researchers have gone on to
study «proteins that cause antibiotic resistance» and to produce three - dimensional images of the
Zika virus at atomic resolution, permitting scientists to hunt for weaknesses that new pharmaceuticals could exploit.
Certain birth defects were 20 times more prevalent in babies born to
Zika virus — infected mothers in the U.S. in 2016 than they were before the virus cropped up in the United States, a CDC
study suggests.
But given its low cost, availability and safety history further
study in a clinical trial to test its effectiveness against
Zika virus in humans is merited.»
Those mice actually die from
Zika infection, making it difficult to
study the natural transmission of the virus from father and mother to fetus and to assess the effect of this transmission on the newborns.»
Traces of
Zika virus typically linger in semen no longer than three months after symptoms show up, a new
study on the virus» staying power in bodily fluids reveals.
A new collaborative
study led by researchers at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute (SBP) and UC San Diego School of Medicine has found that a medication used to prevent and treat malaria may also be effective for
Zika virus.
They produced
Zika virus at the Biosecurity Research Institute and provided it to collaborators to support
studies performed at several other laboratories.
Among the 42
Zika - infected women in the
study, 12 were carrying fetuses with severe abnormalities, including absence or withering of brain structures, tissue death, restricted growth and, in one case, microcephaly.
«Colombia is now only second to Brazil in the number of known
Zika infections,» says
study lead author Matthew Aliota, a research scientist in the UW - Madison School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM).
In addition to revealing
Zika's history, genetic
studies are also valuable in fighting current and future disease outbreaks.
As he and the team show in the
study, the
Zika virus has split into two distinct lineages, African and Asian.
In a third
study reported in Nature, researchers from more than two dozen institutions followed a trail of genetic clues to determine when and how
Zika made its way to Florida.
A new
study led by Colorado State University researchers found that Aedes aegypti, the primary mosquito that carries
Zika virus, might also transmit chikungunya and dengue viruses with one bite.
The team also looked at changes in the genetic sequence of the
Zika NS1 protein over time, noted David L. Akey, a research scientist in Smith's lab and the
study's other lead author.
This is the first
study to assess both the risk of
Zika arrival to an area and the risk of local spread by mosquitoes.
At the University of Southern California, researchers have isolated the two proteins in the
Zika virus that seem to be the culprits «that block normal fetal brain development,» says Jae Jung, the
study's lead author and a microbiologist at USC's Keck School of Medicine.
In this
study, the authors describe a computer model that can be used to calculate the probability that the presence of two
Zika cases in a given area will lead to an epidemic, based on real - time simulations of all the counties in the state of Texas.
Past
studies have shown that adult mice lacking the receptor that binds two types of interferons, interferon - α and interferon - β, are highly susceptible to
Zika.
«We were thrilled that there were no cases of
Zika,» says lead investigator Carrie Byington, M.D., who began the
study while at U of U Health and is now at Texas A&M Health Science Center.
The work could have implications for pregnant women infected with
Zika or women with autoimmune disorders who are trying to have a baby, says
study author Akiko Iwasaki, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator and immunologist at Yale University.
When the researchers injected mice with antibodies from vaccinated people in the
study, the animals were protected against subsequent exposure to
Zika virus, unlike mice that were injected with antibodies from participants who received placebo.
A single genetic mutation made the
Zika virus far more dangerous by enhancing its ability to kill nerve cells in developing brains, a new
study suggests.
«Cryo - EM has revolutionized structural biology, particularly in the last three years, with the invention of new kinds of electron detectors for the microscope,» says Michael Rossmann, a physicist and microbiologist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., and a coauthor of the
Zika mapping
study.
Haddow, who
studies how pathogens survive in the jungle and emerge when humans encroach, had a great personal interest in
Zika: His grandfather, Alexander Haddow, was one of three scientists who had isolated the virus from a rhesus monkey in the
Zika Forest near Entebbe, Uganda, in 1947 and described it in a paper in 1952.
«If you see consistent phenotypes in different models, the things that are happening are probably important,» says Guo - li Ming of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, who led the earlier
studies of
Zika in human neural progenitor cells.
A Johns Hopkins
study earlier this year confirmed that the
Zika virus works by attacking the brain's cortical neural progenitor cells that eventually become the brain's cortex that controls many higher functions.
At the time the
study began, organizers were particularly concerned about
Zika, which can also spread through sexual transmission and cause debilitating birth defects in unborn babies.
The
study reveals that targeting cytoskeleton dynamics could be a previously unexplored strategy to suppress
Zika replication.
Unlike other human antibodies under investigation that recognize both
Zika and the closely related dengue virus, the antibodies used in this
study exclusively target
Zika, demonstrating a high specificity that could be important in avoiding potential side effects — such as enhanced dengue infection in regions where both viruses are endemic.
Akiko Iwasaki, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and immunologist at Yale School of Medicine, and her colleagues were interested in
studying what happens to fetuses when moms are sexually infected with
Zika virus.
A
study just released in Emerging Infectious Diseases suggests that the researcher, Brian Foy of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, passed to his wife the
Zika virus, an obscure pathogen that causes joint pains and extreme fatigue.