Screening individuals already enrolled in ongoing dengue studies, researchers are searching for signs of past Zika infections and present immunity to the emerging virus. “We can now analyze Zika infections in children who we know have had a previous dengue infection or not,” Eva Harris, a viral immunologist at the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health who is leading such an investigation, told The Scientist.
A dearth of diagnostics that can distinguish exposure to related flaviviruses has stifled these efforts. To that end, researchers are working to develop more sensitive and specific tests.
“Is it true that there hasn’t been Zika around the world?” asked Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. “Or has it been there, but we haven’t found it?”
Archaea in the deep sea suffer viral infections more often than bacteria in the same ecosystem, according to ...
