How serious do you find Zika Virus threat?

[Valka]

All it took for an acquaintance's parents to die from AIDS was for her father to receive tainted blood in a transfusion and her mother to get it from a careless mistake when caring for him at home. Both had open cuts, and that's all it took. It wasn't sexual contact; these were two elderly people, and back then Canada's blood services were extremely lax in testing for AIDS.

There was quite a class-action lawsuit.

I suppose they've considered that there might be similar possibilities for Zika. At least I hope so.

[Unorthodox]

Last I heard they were checking that possibility.  It's kinda got the hush hush treatment to avoid a local panic.  If I didn't listen to NPR, I probably wouldn't have known, it's not being covered locally. 

[E_T]

Cannot donate blood, so not that big of a deal to me.  Nor, do I plan on having any kids. 

So, no big deal.

I beleave that you can get with your local Blood Bank and/or hospitol and set up a personal bank for you own use, but for no others.  You would have to replenish on a regular basis, as the blood does go bad, even refrigerated, but tha would also increase your marrow's capaciy to replenish, within the body any large blood losses, over time.  Having a personalized supply would allow for you to still contribute in case of some urgent need but would also save any additional units (that you would have used) for someone else...

[Unorthodox]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/08/18/zika-can-infect-adult-brain-cells-not-just-fetal-cells/

The more researchers learn about the Zika virus, the worse it seems.

A growing body of research has established that the virus can cause severe birth defects — most notably microcephaly, a condition characterized by an abnormally small head and often incomplete brain development. The virus also has been linked to cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome in adults, a rare autoimmune disorder that can result in paralysis and even death.

Now, in a study in mice, researchers have found evidence that suggests adult brain cells critical to learning and memory also might be susceptible to the Zika virus.

"This was kind of a surprise," Joseph Gleeson, a professor at Rockefeller University and one of the co-authors of the study published Thursday in the journal Cell Stem Cell, said in an interview. "We think of Zika health concerns being limited mostly to pregnant women."

 [For Zika-infected pregnancies, microcephaly risk may be as high as 13 percent] 

In a developing fetus, the brain is made primarily of "neural progenitor" cells, a type of stem cell. Researchers believe these cells are especially susceptible to infection by the Zika virus, which can hinder their development and disrupt brain growth. Most adult neurons are believed to be resistant to Zika, which could explain why adults seem less at risk from the virus's most devastating effects.

But some neural progenitor cells remain in adults, where they replenish the brain's neurons over the course of a lifetime. These pockets of stem cells are vital for learning and memory. Gleeson and his colleagues suspected that if Zika can infect fetal neural progenitor cells, the virus might have the same ability to infect adult neural progenitor cells. That's precisely what they found.

"We asked whether [these cells] were vulnerable to Zika in the same way the fetal brain is," Glesson said. "The answer is definitely yes."

Gleeson is the first to admit that the findings represent only an initial step in discovering whether Zika can endanger adult human brain cells. For starters, the study was conducted only in mice, and only at a single point in time. More research will be necessary to see whether the results of the mouse model translates to humans, and whether the damage to adult brain cells can cause long-term neurological damage or affect behavior.




But the initial findings suggest that the Zika virus, which has spread to the United States and more than 60 other countries over the past year, may not be as innocuous as it seems for adults, most of whom never realize they have been infected. Researchers found that infected mice had more cell death in their brains and reduced generation of new neurons, which is key to learning and memory. The possible consequences of damaged neural progenitor cells in humans would include cognitive problems and a higher likelihood for conditions such as depression and Alzheimer’s disease.

 [Obama administration to shift $81 million to fight Zika] 

“Zika can clearly enter the brain of adults and can wreak havoc,” Sujan Shresta, another study co-author and a professor at the La Jolla Institute of Allergy and Immunology, said in a statement. “But it’s a complex disease — it’s catastrophic for early brain development, yet the majority of adults who are infected with Zika rarely show detectable symptoms. Its effect on the adult brain may be more subtle, and now we know what to look for.”

William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, agreed Thursday that the findings are preliminary. But he also called it troubling.

"Here's the deal — the more we've learned about the Zika virus, the nastier it is," said Schaffner, who was not involved in the study. He said scientists have had concerns all along about Zika's ability to damage the brain, but until now the worries have focused mostly on the developing brain. "This mouse study will increase our anxiety. ... It's an additional potential way that this virus can cause human illness."

That's a possibility that demands further examination, he said, given the hundreds of thousands of people already infected by Zika — a number that continues to grow daily.

"Our attention, quite understandably, has been devoted to pregnant women and newborns, and preventing those infections," Schaffner said. "This mouse study will tell investigators that, in addition to pregnant women, you have to establish some studies in older children and adults as well."

[Unorthodox]

http://www.naturalnews.com/054940_Zika_genetically_modified_mosquitoes.html

Grain of salt and all for that source. 

[Unorthodox]

Well, I'm unsure. 

Couple interesting tidbits on Zika and Aedes Aegyptica. 

Zika originated in Aedes Aegyptica in Brazil, and has spread to other Aedes mosquitos, including the arboreal ones I would normally recommend as natural competitors and even predators.  While these don't spread it to humans, they do spread the virus among other mosquitoes. 

It's arrival is relatively shortly after widespread release of genetically modified Aedes Aegyptica mosquitos in Brazil (which is serving as a test bed) that were engineered so that females that mated with the genetically modified males would produce non-viable offspring. 

I DON'T THINK THERE'S NECCESSARILY A CORRELATION.  But it's a HELL of a coincidence. 

I can't find the source, but I've read there cannot be a correlation. 

Something about the Zika virus being a type that is impossible to pick up genes from it's host.  It can leave some behind, but couldn't pick up new ones from the GM mosquitoes. 

The other point against, that the release of mosquitoes was 100 miles from the true epicenter of the Zika thing, I don't buy into.  Releases started in 2012, and 8% of the offspring of a GM mosquito STILL live, so 4 years is enough time for you don't know where the hell the GM genes have gone to by now. 

[Bearu]

The presence of the Zika virus in the general population remains a point of major concern because the number of deformed babies with Intelligence disabilities could increase in a significant manner over the next few years.

[Unorthodox]

The presence of the Zika virus in the general population remains a point of major concern because the number of deformed babies with Intelligence disabilities could increase in a significant manner over the next few years.

There's some recent evidence there more to the defects than just zika. 

[Bearu]

The presence of microcephaly could have a number of different correlations, but I suppose the government would not release the real reason that a number of people have the condition at an above average rate.

[Unorthodox]

It's more the rate is much higher among Zika patients in Brazil than outside Brazil.  There's something else going on in Brazil with the birth defects.

[Rusty Edge]

Well, the presence in 3 Florida Counties and all of the West Indies is restricting my blood donation schedule.
Fortunately, summer is over and it's not spreading that I've heard of by mosquito. West Nile spread faster than predictions due to bird vectors. Zika has the STD vector. We shall see.

[Rusty Edge]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/11/18/who-no-longer-considers-zika-a-global-health-emergency-2/?tid=sm_tw

The World Health Organization has upgraded Zika from an "global heaith emergency " to a " critical and long term priority" requiring a sustained and dedicated program. They succeeded in proving cause and effect with microcephaly, but they were not able to contain Zika.  Zika virus is now in more than 50 countries.

[Unorthodox]

Florida is now releasing the genetically modified mosquitoes in the hopes of stopping Zika...

[Unorthodox]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/health/zika-microcephaly-babies.html?_r=0

It is the news that doctors and families in the heart of Zika territory had feared: Some babies not born with the unusually small heads that are the most severe hallmark of brain damage as a result of the virus have developed the condition, called microcephaly, as they have grown older.

The findings were reported in a study of 13 babies in Brazil that was published Tuesday in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. At birth, none of the babies had heads small enough to receive a diagnosis of microcephaly, but months later, 11 of them did.

For most of those babies, brain scans soon after birth showed significant abnormalities, and researchers found that as the babies aged, their brains did not grow or develop enough for their age and body size. The new study echoes another published this fall, in which three babies were found to have microcephaly later in their first year.

As they closed in on their first birthdays, many of the babies also had some of the other developmental and medical problems caused by Zika infection, a range of disabilities now being called congenital Zika syndrome. The impairments resemble characteristics of cerebral palsy and include epileptic seizures, muscle and joint problems and difficulties swallowing food.

“There are some areas of great deficiency in the babies,” said Dr. Cynthia Moore, the director of the division of congenital and developmental disorders for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and an author of the new study. “They certainly are going to have a lot of impairment.”

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Dr. Deborah Levine, a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School who has studied Zika but was not involved in either study, said there would most likely be other waves of children whose brains were affected by the Zika infection, but not severely enough to be noticed in their first year.

Short Answers to Hard Questions About Zika Virus
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“A lot of the developmental abnormalities we’re not going to see until later,” she said. “There’s going to be another group seen later in childhood, I’m afraid, and another group probably when they reach school age.”

In the new study, doctors at two clinics in the northeastern Brazilian states of Pernambuco and Ceará described the cases of 13 infants who had tested positive for the Zika virus. In 11 of the babies, brain scans taken days or weeks after birth showed significant neurological damage, including improperly formed brain areas, excess fluid in some places and abnormal calcium deposits, or calcification, which probably resulted from brain cell death. But the size of their heads, though small, was not small enough to be considered microcephaly. So doctors monitored their progress as they grew.

Dr. Vanessa van der Linden, another author of the study and a neuropediatrician at the Association for Assistance of Disabled Children in Recife, Brazil, where most of the babies in the study are patients, said the type of brain damage in the babies who later developed microcephaly “presented the same pattern, but less severe” than those with it at birth.

The babies in the study published this fall also appeared to have a pattern of similar, but less severe, brain damage, said Dr. Antonio Augusto Moura da Silva, of the Federal University of Maranhão and an author of that study, which was published in Emerging Infectious Diseases. He and his colleagues studied 48 babies with brain abnormalities in the northeastern state of Maranhão, identified six babies who did not have microcephaly at birth, and found that three of them later developed it.

“We were worried, but now that we’ve started following those cases, we are very sad,” Dr. Silva said. “The picture is really terrible. At the least, if they have microcephaly, we expect them to have a very poor quality of life.”

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Experts and the authors of the studies said it was unclear why these infants’ brains did not develop enough to match their age and body size. Dr. Ernesto T. A. Marques Jr., an infectious disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Recife, who was not involved in either study, said it could be that because of the initial fetal brain damage, “the necessary pathways and hormones that organize growth of the neonatal brain are not there anymore and the brain doesn’t grow.”

It could also be the result of the immune system responding to the original Zika virus infection. Dr. Moore said that another possibility might be that there was still some infection that continued to damage the brain. But she said that seemed less likely, given that follow-up tests for Zika virus conducted on seven of the babies did not find evidence of active infection.

 
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The oldest babies in these studies are only just over a year old, too young for researchers to identify cognitive problems or delays in skills like speech. But some deficits are clear: Many of the babies had serious physical deficits tied to neurological damage, including overly tense muscles, muscle weakness and the inability to voluntarily move their hands.

Still, unlike many babies born with microcephaly, most of the 13 in the new study had social interaction skills like smiling and making eye contact. And eight of them had good head control, an important skill for developing the ability to sit or walk.

While cautioning that the study involved too few cases to make generalizations, Dr. van der Linden said that it appeared that most of these babies had good eye contact because the damage was less severe in brain areas involving vision than it was in areas involving motor skills.

Dr. Marques said that head control, the ability to lift and support the head without help, in babies with microcephaly was “quite rare.” Having a social smile and eye contact is less rare, he said, depending on the type of visual damage and on whether they receive enough visual stimulation to strengthen their ability to use their eyes.

“At this age, 80 percent of brain stimulus comes from the eyes,” he said. “If you don’t have that working and you lose this window of opportunity, these babies cannot recover it.”

One baby, a boy, had no anomalies at birth. His limbs looked normal and his head size was proportional to his body, Dr. Moore said. But brain scans soon after birth showed excess fluid and abnormalities in his cortex and corpus callosum, which separates the two hemispheres. At 11 months old, he had microcephaly, and also epilepsy, difficulty swallowing, involuntary muscle contractions, and muscles that were too stiff and restricted his movement, she said.

Another baby had a sloping forehead and slight depressions in the front of his head at birth, as well as similar types of brain damage, apparent on scans, Dr. Moore said. By the time he was 1, he had developed microcephaly that was among the most severe of the babies in the study, and had muscular and swallowing problems. But he also had good eye contact, researchers reported.

In six of the cases, the mothers reported having a symptom of Zika infection, a rash, between the second and fifth months of pregnancy. That supports other evidence suggesting that babies born to mothers who were infected late in the first trimester suffer the most serious effects. But since there are no symptoms in 80 percent of cases of Zika infection, it was unclear when most of the women were infected, and researchers are still unable to say whether the virus is more damaging to babies if their mothers experience symptoms

[Rusty Edge]

My search indicates that West Nile virus references and discussions are scattered, so I'm placing this here. Apparently, climate change is good for West Nile virus. Milder winters make for better mosquito survival. Surprisingly, droughts are a contributing factor because it makes the birds congregate. This increases the infection %.

https://khn.org/news/article/climate-change-may-push-the-us-toward-the-goldilocks-zone-for-west-nile-virus/