A breakthrough report published yesterday could provide an important link between the Zika virus and the birth defect microcephaly, and will likely serve as a springboard for local research efforts into the mystery illness, Hub scientists say.
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Medical Daily explains. The researchers then exposed the three types of brain cells to the Zika virus and analyzed the result.
At Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Cell Engineering, part of Johns Hopkins Medicine, neuroscientists Hongjun Song and Guo-li Ming collaborated with virologist Hengli Tang at Florida State University and colleagues in a laboratory study to see if they could make the connection between the virus and the birth defect.
“We don’t feel that there’s a public health threat because Zika virus is mostly spread by the bite of the mosquito and the mosquitoes that carry Zika virus are not present in Contra Costa County”, she said.
These lab-grown cells might be used to screen for drugs that protect the cells, Cell Stem Cell said.
Four cases of the virus have been confirmed in Maryland, up from three last week, according to Maryland health officials. With the accumulating evidence on Zika virus, the World Health Organization solicits the authorities of the subject to come up with an advice for travelers bound for Latin America countries and to women themselves who live in affected areas.
Apart from its links to microcephaly, an irreversible condition in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and brains, it is also suspected of causing Guillain-Barre syndrome, a neurological disorder. But unlike some of those viruses, there is no vaccine to prevent Zika or medicine to treat the infection. Other types of fetal cells injected with the virus were unaffected, suggesting that Zika specifically targets the cortex as it is forming.
The preliminary results are based off of the first 42 Zika infected women who agreed to ultrasounds.
Noting more confirmatory epidemiologic data is still needed from Zika endemic areas, Alyssa Stephenson-Famy, assistant professor at the University of Washington, said: “This is exactly the kind of research that we need to demonstrate a causative link and mechanism between the Zika virus and microcephaly”.
Most people who are infected with the mosquito-borne virus have no symptoms.
It has since become the hardest hit country, with an estimated 1.5 million cases of active Zika transmission and 641 confirmed cases of microcephaly.
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The virus often leads to relatively mild symptoms, such as joint pain, fevers, or rashes; most people don’t even notice they are infected.
