Controlling the Zika Virus -- Some Promising News

By Floyd Arthur

As the Zika virus spreads across the Americas, public health officials across the globe are scrambling for a suitable response. Labeling the virus a “public health emergency of international concern" the World Health Organization is calling for additional resources to deliver aid to affected countries and fund research to find effective treatments and a vaccine.  

A close relative of dengue and yellow fevers, the Zika virus is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, and causes an innocuous infection in most healthy, nonpregnant adults. Most victims are asymptomatic. When they do occur, symptoms include mild fever, joint pain, headache, conjunctivitis and a rash.

The danger of Zika, health officials now believe, is to the unborn fetus. Following a recent outbreak of the virus in Brazil, 3,893 infants were born with microcephaly in a period of about four months. The incidence in prior years was about 160 cases annually.

Microcephaly varies in severity, but all infants with the condition suffer some degree of neurological sequelae, including cognitive impairment, seizures, developmental delay, blindness and hearing loss. Some infants whose brains are so underdeveloped that they cannot sustain vital function die soon after birth.

Although the link between the Zika virus and microcephaly has not been confirmed, the virus has been isolated from the brain tissue of microcephalic infants who died. It has also been found in the placenta and amniotic fluid, confirming that, unlike yellow and dengue fevers, the Zika virus can cross the placenta and infect the fetus “in utero.”

A Novel Approach to Controlling the Zika Virus

As our recent experience with Ebola demonstrates all too well, any traditional efforts to eradicate Zika in the face of an exploding global pandemic are almost certainly doomed to fail. Therapeutic measures to treat the virus are virtually nonexistent, and there is no vaccine. Travel warnings have been issued targeting women who are pregnant or think they may be pregnant, and women in countries such as Brazil and El Salvador are being warned to forgo pregnancy until the virus can be contained. But Zika  is now in 27 countries*, and moving fast.

Enter the Britain-based biotech firm Oxitec, which is targeting the virus using a genetically modified mosquito dubbed OX513A. The company, a subsidiary of Intrexon (XON), has successfully modified millions of male Aedes aegypti mosquitos so that they die soon after being released into the wild, but not until after they sire a generation of offspring that die soon after birth.

Preliminary studies using the transgenic mosquitoes have been extremely encouraging. In a small trial in Moscamed, Brazil, the Aedes aegypti population declined by nearly 99 percent in a matter of months, and in Piracicaba, Brazil the number of targeted mosquitoes dropped by 82 percent. Similar trials in Panama and the Cayman Islands are yielding nearly identical results.  

Oxitec does not yet have the necessary licenses to sell its services commercially, said Glen Slade, Oxitec's head of business development in Brazil, in a statement to CNN. However, the city of Piracicaba has contributed 150,000 Brazilian reals ($37,000) to helping the company develop a mosquito factory that it hopes will protect about 60,000 residents from the Zika, dengue and chikungunya viruses.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration is reviewing Oxitec’s application to release OX513A mosquitoes in the Florida Keys, but concerns about the long-term environmental impact have kept the study in a holding pattern since 2012. However, with the threat of Zika looming larger on the horizon, that may soon change.  

Latest Developments: Is the Zika Virus an STI?

Although the Zika virus has been known to survive in semen for up to two weeks following infection, health officials have heretofore advised the public that the likelihood of contracting Zika through sexual contact was extremely small. However, on February 2, 2016, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control reversed that stance after a Dallas woman was likely infected through sexual contact, the BBC reports. The woman had not travelled outside the U.S., but her partner had recently returned from Venezuela.

The CDC now advises women who are or may become pregnant “to avoid exposure to semen from someone who has been exposed to Zika” or who has traveled to one of the 27 countries where the Zika virus has been found. U.K. health officials have expanded that warning, advising men whose partners are or may be pregnant to use condoms for 28 days after traveling to an affected region and for six months following a confirmed infection.

As the Zika pandemic demonstrates all too clearly, the healthcare landscape changes almost daily, both here in the U.S. and across the globe. For physicians, keeping up with the latest developments is an almost overwhelming task.  Yet not being up to date can result in inadvertent treatment errors and even a costly lawsuit.

At The Physician Guard we work with you to make sure your malpractice insurance is comprehensive and consistent with your needs. Call us today at 516-292-3780 to arrange for your insurance review. Or, if you prefer, simply request a quote online now.