Brazilian health authorities are sounding the alarm about a mosquito-borne virus that they believe may be the cause of thousands of infants being born with damaged brains.

The pathogen, known as Zika and first discovered in forest monkeys in Africa over 70 years ago, is the new West Nile -- a virus that causes mild symptoms in most but can lead to serious neurological complications or even death in others. Brazil's health ministry said on Nov. 28 that it had found the Zika virus in a baby with microcephaly — a rare condition in which infants are born with shrunken skulls — during an autopsy after the child died. The virus was also found in the amniotic fluid of two mothers whose babies had the condition.

"This is an unprecedented situation, unprecedented in world scientific research," the ministry said in a statement on its website, according to CNN.

[Zika virus: What you need to know]

Brazil is investigating more than more than 2,400 suspected cases of microcephaly and 29 deaths of infants that occurred this year. Last year the country saw only 147 cases of microcephaly.

The situation in Brazil is so overwhelming that Angela Rocha, a pediatric infectious diseases specialist in Pernambuco, one of the hardest hit states, said in an interview with CNN that women may want to hold off on getting pregnant.

"These are newborns who will require special attention their entire lives. It's an emotional stress that just can't be imagined...," Rocha said. "We're talking about a generation of babies that's going to be affected."

The aedes aegypti mosquito at an entomology laboratory in Fort-de-France, in the French overseas department of Martinique. Brazil's Health Ministry confirmed the connection between the growing of microcephaly cases in babies born in northeast Brazil and the Zika virus. (Patrice Coppee/AFP/Getty Images)

Until a few years ago, human infections with the virus were almost unheard of. Then, for reasons scientists can't explain but think may have to do with the complicated effects of climate change, it began to pop up in far-flung parts of the world. In 2007, it infected nearly three-quarters of Yap Island's 11,000 residents. In 2013, Zika showed up in Tahiti and other parts of French Polynesia and was responsible for making an estimated 28,000 people so ill they sought medical care. It arrived in Brazil in May, where tens of thousands have fallen ill.

The աօʀʟd ɦɛaʟtɦ օʀɢaռiʐatɨօռ, which has been monitoring the spread of the virus closely and issued an alert about the situation in Brazil, reported this month that it had popped up for the first time in the West African nation of Cape Verde and that it had led to additional illnesses in Panama and Honduras.

In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found the virus in a few travelers returning from overseas, but says there have not come across any cases of people being infected by mosquitoes in the country.

Brazil has been struggling to contain the virus for months through both public education campaigns --which urge residents to use insect repelant and limit their time outdoors -- as well as by sending mosquito eradication teams house to house to treat places where aedes aegypti mosquito that carries the virus might breed. The health ministry said it was sending truckloads of larvicide -- enough to treat 3,560 Olympic-sized swimming pools -- to northeastern and southeastern states that have been most affected and that it would add 266,000 new community health agents to make the house calls.

Last year (or two years ago, I don't remember) thousands millions of GMO mosquitos were released in Brazil as an experiment to help eliminate disease. And now we have this.


http://www.americanscientist.org/science/pub/brazil-tests-gm-mosquitoes-to-fight-dengue

Brazil Tests GM Mosquitoes to Fight Dengue
from Nature News

Scientists in Brazil say an experiment to reduce populations of the dengue-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito, by releasing millions of genetically modified (GM) insects into the wild, is working.

More than ten million modified male mosquitoes were released in the city of Juazeiro, a city of 288,000 people, over a period of time starting a year ago. The results were released at a workshop in Rio last week (28-29 March), where the project's co-ordinator, Aldo Malavasi, said they were "very positive."

"From samples collected in the field, 85 percent of the eggs were transgenic, which means that the males released are overriding the wild population. This [should result] in the decrease of Aedes mosquitoes, and in the decrease of dengue transmission," he told SciDev.Net.

Read more...

The World Health Organisation announced on Thursday that it will convene an emergency meeting to try to find ways to stop the transmission of the Zika virus - which officials said is "spreading explosively" across the Americas.

"The level of alarm is extremely high, as is the level of uncertainty. Questions abound. We need to get some answers quickly, " Margaret Chan, the director-general of the WHO, said in Geneva in a briefing to member countries.

Chan said that the situation today is dramatically different from last year because of the multiplying number of cases and the severity of the symptoms and that "the level of alarm is extremely high."

Health officials said 23 countries are affected by mosquitoes that are spreading the virus locally. The Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said the United States has 31 confirmed cases in 11 states and the District of Columbia. All are travel-related, the CDC's Lyle Petersen said, and "this number is increasing rapidly." The country also has 20 additional cases because of local transmission in US territories - 19 in Puerto Rico and one in the US Virgin Islands.

Brazil is the epicenter of Zika, and public health officials are investigating a link between the virus and a rare brain defect called microcephaly in infants, as well as a nervous system syndrome known as Guillain-Barre that can lead to paralysis.

During a briefing to the WHO executive board on Thursday, Brazil's health minister, Claudio Maierovitch, said the country is investigating 12 confirmed deaths of babies born with microcephaly for potential linkage with Zika virus infection. The country has more than 4000 suspected cases of microcephaly. Some of those have turned out not to be microcephaly, but many of them have been confirmed through ultrasound, he said. He did not provide a figure. Pregnant women who tested positive for the Zika virus have had a rash and fever during the "first and second parts of their pregnancy," he said.

Several countries, such as El Salvador, have been so shaken by the reports that they have taken extreme measures by advising women of childbearing age to wait six months to two years before trying to become pregnant. Bruce Aylward, assistant director-general of the WHO, said the group's position is that women who are pregnant should engage in "an abundance of caution" to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes.

Marcos Espinal, director of communicable diseases and health analysis for the Pan American Health Organisation, said Zika is likely to spread to the same areas where dengue exists and predicted that "we can expect 3 to 4 million cases of Zika virus disease."

That reach includes parts of the southern United States, according to a map he presented at the briefing.

The WHO said the reason Zika appears to be spreading so rapidly is two-fold: One, because it is a new disease to the region, the population does not have immunity and two, the Zika virus is primarily transmitted by a mosquito species known as Aedes aegypti, which lives in every country in North and South America except for Canada and Chile.

WHO officials said that this type of mosquito also has been simultaneously carrying a host of other viruses - dengue, Chikungunya, yellow fever, West Nile - to those regions in recent years. Among the hypotheses scientists are looking are whether the recent severe reactions may be related to co-infection with Zika and another virus, or previous exposure to one.

Aylward said that some of the women who gave birth to children with microcephaly had been tested and some of them had other infections and some did not.

"We don't have an answer as to what is actually going on," he said.

Part of the challenge with Zika is that it is often "silent" with up to 75 per cent of patients who are infected having no symptoms, said Sylvain Aldighieri, who works in epidemic alert and response for the WHO/PAHO.

Representatives from several countries raised concerns about whether we're seeing a potentially more virulent mutated virus in the Americas, but WHO officials said that tests so far show that it's "very similar" to what was circulating in the Pacific region several years ago.

WHO officials that better diagnostic tests are in the works as well as possible antiviral therapies and vaccines but that any of these could take months to develop. Meanwhile, efforts are focused on controlling the spread of the virus by eliminating mosquito populations. In some countries health officials have been going door to door to spray for mosquito breeding grounds and have launched public education campaigns to urge people to wear repellent clothing or use sprays. In a controversial experiment, a British company has announced it would release genetically modified mosquitoes whose larvae die to see if they can help stop the spread of the virus.

The WHO's Chan urged "every community, every family and individual" to do their part by doing things like taking care not to leave stagnant collections of water on their properties and emphasised that every person in the world could be vulnerable to the virus.

"The mosquito is ubiquitous," she said. "You don't need to travel to get the disease."

The WHO emergency session on Zika is scheduled to take place on Monday.

Fluoride fossilizes the pineal gland in the brain. The pineal gland is that part of the brain that enables us to pray and be attentive to prayer.