Even if further studies find that Zika can not be transmitted through human tears, it may be possible to test tears for Zika genetic material or antibodies to offer a less painful way to diagnose recent Zika infection than the current method of taking blood samples, the researchers said.
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The organisation added current evidence on persistence of Zika virus in semen, its infectiousness and impact on sexual transmission remains limited.
About one-third of babies born with the Zika virus have inflammation of the eyes, sometimes rendering them blind.
We’ve always known that the Zika virus showed up in the blood of the infected; after all, it’s spread by mosquitoes, the tiny, winged hypodermic syringes of the entomological world.
To date, there are no locally transmitted Zika cases in Georgia, which means Zika has not been spread by mosquitoes in the state.
A new study about Zika and tears might explain why some infected patients develop eye problems.
Mouse research can be a catalyst for research in people, but the results do not necessarily translate the same way.
The Zika virus strain found in the recent cases at the Aljunied Crescent/Sims Drive cluster is similar to strains of the virus circulating in South-east Asia since the 1960s, it was announced at a briefing by the Ministry of Health’s National Public Health Laboratory (NPHL) and A*Star’s Bioinformatics Institute (BII) on Thursday.
Even if the sad salty tears of humans turn out not to be infectious, the researchers’ detection of live virus in the eye and viral RNA in tears still has practical benefits.
“There could be a window of time when tears are highly infectious and people are coming in contact with it and able to spread it”, Miner noted.
Earlier in the week, the Philippines reported its first case of Zika virus this year when a 45-year-old married female from Iloilo City was found to have contracted it.
Dr Senanayake said mosquito-borne infection with Zika was still the most common way of getting the virus, but sexual transmission – including women infecting men – was more common than initially thought.
As an immune-privileged site, the eye doesn’t get a lot of activity from the immune system to prevent accidental damage to sensitive tissues for vision while fighting off an infection. The mouse eye could be used to test anti-Zika drugs.
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“The Zika epidemic has been very explosive, more explosive than we can account for by just mosquitoes and the level of Zika virus in human blood”. This includes the number of travel-related cases of Zika in Georgia, the counties of residence, and links to the latest information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
