Zika virus unlikely to infect same person twice

You are unlikely to get Zika fever twice as new research bolsters the belief that people infected with the virus may not be susceptible to it again. “The research shows that infection provides excellent protection against reinfection,” said one of the researchers Stephen Higgs, Director of the Biosecurity Research Institute, at Kansas State University in the US. “This means people infected during this current epidemic will likely not be susceptible again. When a large proportion of the population is protected — known as herd immunity — the risk of future…

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Zika Virus Damage Can Mislead Parents, Experts Say

The 2-month-old baby looks exceptional. She’s crawling forward at an age when most infants cannot even roll over. Another tiny infant sits straight up when her foot is tickled. Sometimes the parents are pleased, and see these behaviors as a sign that Zika may not have damaged their babies as badly as they feared. Alice Vitoria Gomes Bezerra, who has microcephaly, is held by her mother Nadja Cristina Gomes Bezerra in Recife, Brazil. Mario Tama / Getty Images But in fact, these reflexes are a sign of the profound mess…

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Limiting travel, controlling mosquitoes reduces Zika risk

Zika virus, dengue fever and chikungunya virus are increasingly common in the Caribbean Basin and Latin Americ… Read More To limit mosquito-borne illnesses, including the Zika virus, plan travel carefully, take personal protective measures, and control mosquitoes in and around the home, experts recommend. In most adults, Zika produces no symptoms or only mild symptoms like fever and rash. But children of women infected in pregnancy may be born with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads, which can be linked to seizures, intellectual disability, hearing loss or vision problems, and has…

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Austrian biotech plans Zika vaccine clinical trials in 12 months

An Austrian biotech company working with the Institut Pasteur said on Tuesday it planned to start clinical trials with an experimental Zika vaccine in the next 12 months, marking a further acceleration of research in the field. Themis Bioscience has signed a licence deal with the French research institute giving it extensive rights to the Zika vaccine candidate, which is based on established measles vaccine technology. More than a dozen small biotech firms and other organisations are working on vaccines against mosquito-borne Zika, which has been linked to birth defects…

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Zika virus related to unreported eye troubles in infants

A group of ophthalmologists has determined formerly unreported eye issues in toddlers born to mothers who confirmed signs and symptoms of Zika virus contamination for the duration of pregnancy. The researchers from Brazil and Stanford university determined unreported eye problems like retinal lesions, haemorrhaging and odd blood vessel improvement in 3 Brazilian babies with microcephaly — a beginning disorder marked by smaller head and mind length resulting from Zika virus. besides those observations, the toddlers on this have a look at — published inside the magazine Ophthalmology — also exhibited…

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Zika to spread to Europe through this summer

The Zika virus is predicted to spread to Europe by this summer season , but the chance can be “low to moderate”, the world fitness business enterprise has stated. WHO said there has been a “excessive” threat the virus will appear in regions where a kind of mosquito referred to as the Aedes aegypti lives. the european Centre for disease Prevention and manage stated the mosquito type has been currently stated in Madeira, the Netherlands and the north-eastern Black coastline (southern Russia and Georgia), Sky news said on Wednesday. there…

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