In a statement, Republican Gov. Rick Scott called the diagnosis “heartbreaking” and asked federal health experts to talk with Florida medical professionals about what precautions pregnant women should take. “This new mouse model should be useful for comparative assessments of the large range of vaccine candidates now being designed”, said Professor Adrian Hill, director of Oxford University’s Jenner Institute, which did not conduct the mouse study but is also developing Zika vaccines.
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“The protection was striking”, Barouch said in an interview with TMN, noting that all mice that received the vaccine and were subsequently infected with Zika showed “no detectable virus”.
In this paper, we show that two vaccine candidates – a DNA vaccine and a purified inactivated virus vaccine – both provided complete protection against Zika virus challenge in mice.
The tests could provide a promising sign that similar vaccines under development for humans will protect against the mosquito-borne virus.
In Florida, there have been more than 200 cases of Zika, which can cause birth defects. All of the women contracted the mosquito-borne virus while traveling overseas. U.S. vaccine maker Inovio Pharmaceuticals last week got U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval to begin testing its Zika DNA vaccine in humans.
DFAT is warning travellers of “sporadic transmission” of the Zika virus in Indonesia.
That’s why he advises patients to stay put if you’re pregnant or want to be.
Information from The Washington Post was included in this story.
Crucially, it was not clear if the vaccines also produced antibodies against other viruses in the Zika family, such as dengue, which could cross-react with the Zika antibodies to dangerously enhance infection, commentators said.
The extent of Haiti’s Zika outbreak is unknown due to the country’s lack of routine data collection systems. While these viruses typically only cause mild symptoms in adults, they can cause rare cases of paralyzing neurological conditions and severe birth defects, such as microcephaly, when infecting pregnant women.
Assessing Zika virus levels in the blood of pregnant women to determine fetal infection might also help guide researchers trying to develop treatments to protect babies from Zika-related brain damage.
Now, mice and humans are obviously different, and one of the co-authors concedes that fact but says the findings “raise optimism” that a vaccine for humans may not be too far off. To date, the response has been maintained for two months.
In the study, researchers infected rhesus macaque monkeys with the Zika virus strain that emerged in South America in 2015. Once they became infected with Zika, the virus persisted for 30-70 days.
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“You may have to follow children for five years or longer to tell whether there is cognitive impairment in their development”, Aliota said.
