10 Things you need to know from the International Zika Summit In Paris

 

Zika is under researched and the recent spread of the virus has led to new information from researchers all over the world, here are 10 points from the latest conference in Paris:

1. Most of the people attendees were from France, a lot from brazil, and the rest from all over the world.
2. In Pernambuco, Brazil there are case of twins, where one has microcephaly and the other doesn't, could be genetic risk factors involved.
3. Zika virus was also found in other primates which are very common in brazil.
4. It is suggested that infection during the first trimester can cause microcephaly.
5. Microcephaly is just the tip of the iceberg and the most pronounced symptom. Other symptoms are harder to see or measure, there is calcification and other neural damage, caused due to apoptosis not necrosis which seems to appear late developmentally.
6. A panel discussion described how zika is hard to sequence, and the viremia is low leading to false negatives.
7. We still don't know how long ZIKA persists, especially in the brain of newborns, we know it is found in the CSF.
8. The immune response is different if you experienced Dengue, if you had Dengue you are in greater risk to suffer more from a Zika infection.
9. ZIKA IgM is only 80 percent specific, 20% cross reactivity with other flaviviruses (dengue).
10. There is a big problem with donated blood and testing it, we don't know how long it stays active and what level is enough for infection to cause disease.

Here is a very interesting study from the CDC If you are interested to learn more and more information WSJ 

Hope this information helps other teams working on ZIKA.

Thanks for reading,

Guy ,

Gilad and the team.

#hope