Upstate Medical University researcher Anna Stewart Ibarra, Ph.D., M.P.A., and her colleagues have created a mathematical model that can serve as a guide to make monthly predictions on when people are at greatest risk for contracting mosquito-borne viruses, such as dengue, Zika and chikungunya, due to climate conditions.
The new Upper Midwestern Center of Excellence in Vector Borne Diseases, led by the University of Wisconsin–Madison, this week identified the Asian tiger mosquito, which can spread the Zika virus, for the first time in Wisconsin.
UC San Diego scientists will study an innovative research technique as a way to control disease-causing mosquitoes. The project, which will receive up to $14.9 million, will focus on a technique known as gene drive, which can spread desirable genes in wild populations and suppress harmful organisms.
A new study in mice shows that females vaccinated before pregnancy and infected with Zika virus while pregnant bear pups who show no trace of the virus. The findings offer the first evidence that an effective vaccine can protect vulnerable fetuses from Zika infection and resulting injury.
While the Zika virus is primarily transmitted by mosquitoes, research has shown that the disease can affect semen and sperm and can therefore be spread through sexual intercourse.
A drug that modulates the placenta’s normal barrier to infection protects the fetus from Zika infection, according to a study of pregnant mice from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The drug is already used in pregnant women to treat malaria.
The University of Notre Dame has announced a collaboration with Mayo Clinic, the Belize Ministry of Health and the Belize Vector and Ecology Center aimed at strengthening the country’s ability to respond to Zika virus and other arboviruses.
Researchers at New Mexico State University have received a second contract from the New Mexico Department of Health to expand last summer’s project to map the geographic distribution of mosquitoes that can carry the Zika virus in the state. The first study found the mosquitoes are located in urban areas in southern New Mexico.
Southern Research scientists are investigating how the Zika virus is able to find a safe harbor in an infected host’s tissue and stage a rebound weeks after the virus was seemingly cleared by the immune system.
Indiana University researchers discovered a key biological mechanism that could explain why mosquitoes infected Wolbachia bacteria are unable to transmit diseases such as dengue fever, West Nile virus and Zika.
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have shown that for the virus that causes the flu, two wrongs can sometimes make a right.
FSU Professor of Biological Science Hengli Tang will receive $1.8 million from the NIH and serve as the co-lead on a project focusing on zika and West Nile research.
Zika viral load and the degree of Zika symptoms during pregnancy are not necessarily associated with problems during pregnancy or fetal abnormalities at birth. The presence of antibodies to previously acquired dengue fever also is not necessarily linked to abnormalities during pregnancy or at birth.
Jorge Rey, director of the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory, went to the nation’s capital to talk about how organizations can work together to control mosquitoes that transmit – or “vector” -- the virus.
A chemical currently being used to ward off mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus and a commonly used insecticide that was threatened with a ban in the United States have been associated with reduced motor function in Chinese infants, a University of Michigan study found.
A University of Florida entomologist is working with other scientists to detect the Zika virus in minutes, rather than days or weeks, allowing for faster and more targeted mosquito control practices and detection in patient samples.
A Georgia State University researcher, in collaboration with researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Florida State University, has received a five-year, $7.7 million federal grant to study the consequences of West Nile and Zika virus infections on the human central nervous system.
Zika virus infection passes efficiently from a pregnant monkey to its fetus, spreading inflammatory damage throughout the tissues that support the fetus and the fetus’s developing nervous system, and suggesting a wider threat in human pregnancies than generally appreciated.
With mosquito season looming in the Northern Hemisphere, doctors and researchers are poised to take on a new round of Zika virus infections. Now a new study by a large group of international researchers led by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) explains how Zika virus entered the United States via Florida in 2016—and how it might re-enter the country this year.
An international research collaboration has studied the genetics of Zika virus in Brazil and beyond, providing a new understanding of the disease and its rapid spread through space and time. The research has significant public health implications and has the potential to improve responses to future outbreaks.
As the days get warmer and we once again begin shooing away mosquitoes, how concerned should D.C. residents be about Zika? While a local outbreak is not likely anytime soon, that doesn’t mean our community should ignore this serious infection. Let’s look at what we know, what we don’t, and how you can protect yourself, your partner and, potentially, your unborn child.
Compound could serve as basis for drugs to prevent neurological complications of Zika
Finding will aid global public health officials as they develop early warning systems for dengue, Zika and chikungunya and find ways to reduce the risk of exposure to disease-carrying mosquitoes.
Dr. Lamb and her colleagues developed a quick, simple test for Zika virus so easy to administer, you don’t even need a doctor. It’s a urine test that produces results in under 30 minutes
Even a relatively mild Zika outbreak in the United States could cost more than $183 million in medical costs and productivity losses, suggests a computational analysis led by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers, while a more severe one could result in $1.2 billion or more in medical costs and productivity losses.
Researchers at the UNC School of Medicine are working to develop a test for the Zika virus that they hope will provide accurate results for a wide range of time between when an individual is potentially exposed to when he or she is tested for the virus.
Many people might not have heard of the Aedes aegypti mosquito until this past year, when the mosquito, and the disease it can carry – Zika – began to make headlines. But more than 220 years ago, this same breed of mosquito was spreading a different and deadly epidemic right here in Philadelphia and just like Zika, this epidemic is seeing a modern resurgence, with Brazil at its epicenter.
UF/IFAS entomology associate professor Chelsea Smartt led a research team that found Zika RNA in Aedes albopictus. That’s not the species -- known as Aedes aegypti -- most often associated with Zika. But scientists have never discounted Aedes albopictus as another possible carrier of the potentially deadly virus.
Although warm, spring weather means more time outdoors, it also means more bugs – like bees, ticks and mosquitoes. The best way to deal with pesky bites and stings, say dermatologists from the American Academy of Dermatology, is to prevent them in the first place. This can also help you avoid an insect-related disease, which can put a damper on anyone’s spring.
Berkeley Lab researchers collaborated with colleagues from the University of Indiana and Texas A&M University to solve the atomic structure of a Zika virus protein that is key to viral reproduction. The X-ray studies were conducted at the Advanced Light Source in the Berkeley Center for Structural Biology.
As the Zika virus continues to spread rapidly across the globe, it might pose a particular risk to people previously infected with two related viruses, dengue and West Nile, researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have found. Their study, published in the journal Science, may help explain the severe manifestations of Zika virus infection observed in specific populations, including those in South America.
Although the World Health Organization ended its global health emergency on Zika last November, the virus could still make a comeback as temperatures get warmer and mosquito season ramps up.
Nearly half of New Hampshire residents surveyed believe scientists adjust their findings to get the answers they want, and these people are significantly less likely to trust the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as a source of information on the Zika virus, according to new research released by the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.
Top experts from the government, non-profit and media sphere will address past, present and future contagious threats in an afternoon-long event at the University of Michigan.
A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore has uncovered hidden vulnerabilities on the surface of the dengue virus.
A study published today reports that a team led by Indiana University scientists has mapped a key protein that causes the Zika virus to reproduce and spread.
Researchers predicted the places in the continental U.S. where Zika is most likely to be transmitted are the Mississippi delta and southern states extending northward along the Atlantic coast and in southern California.
In a new paper, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine, along with colleagues in Brazil and Spain, describe the phenotypic spectrum or set of observable characteristics of congenital Zika (ZIKV) syndrome, based upon clinical evaluations and neuroimaging of 83 Brazilian children with presumed or confirmed ZIKV congenital infections.
A team of Vanderbilt biologists has found that the malaria mosquito has a second complete set of odor receptors that are specially tuned to human scents.
News release on the Zika virus
Although Zika and dengue are considered different virus “species,” they are so closely related that the immune system treats Zika just like another version of dengue, report researchers at La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology. Their latest study, published in the March 13, 2017, advance online edition of Nature Microbiology, shows that pre-existing immunity to dengue virus modulates the magnitude and breadth of the immune system’s T cell response to Zika.
Zika also may have serious effects on the heart, new research shows in the first study to report cardiovascular complications related to this virus, according to data being presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 66th Annual Scientific Session.
Zika virus could be transmitted by more mosquito species than those currently known, according to a new predictive model created by ecologists at the University of Georgia and the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.
Scientists at the Wayne State University School of Medicine Department of Ophthalmology at the Kresge Eye Institute have shown that the Zika virus can replicate in the eye’s retinal cells, causing severe tissue damage and even blindness. The research is supported in part by Research to Prevent Blindness.
About the size of a tablet, a portable device that could be used in a host of environments like a busy airport or even a remote location in South America, may hold the key to detecting the dreaded Zika virus accurately, rapidly and inexpensively using just a saliva sample. For about $2 and within 15 minutes, researchers hope to accurately determine whether or not an individual has an active infection.
Australia’s Ross River Virus (RRV) could be the next mosquito-borne global epidemic according to a new research study led by the University of Adelaide and The Australian National University.
Johns Hopkins researchers say that in early pregnancy in mice with complete immune systems, Zika virus can cross the placenta – intended to protect the developing fetus – and appears to lead to a high percentage of miscarriages and to babies born with thin brain tissue and inflammation in brain cells.
As public health officials warn that spring’s warmer temperatures may herald another increase of Zika virus infections in the Caribbean and North and South America, researchers around the world are racing to develop safe and effective measures to prevent the disease. In a review paper published today in the journal Immunity, a group of leading vaccine scientists – including Dan H. Barouch, MD, PhD, of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) – outline advances in the hunt for a Zika vaccine and the challenges that still lie ahead. “The pace of preclinical and early clinical development for Zika vaccines is unprecedented,” said Barouch, corresponding author and director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at BIDMC. “In less than a year, our group and others have demonstrated that multiple vaccine platforms can provide robust protection against Zika virus challenge in animal models. However, unique challenges will need to be addressed in the clinical development of a Zi
Barry Alto, a UF/IFAS assistant professor of medical entomology, said scientists need better diagnostic tools to detect Zika virus to meet challenges to public health. He is working with collaborator Steven Benner at Firebird Biomolecular Sciences LLC to develop methods they hope should take about an hour – far less time than current testing methods.
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