Zika virus vaccine breakthrough
Print Edition
NEW research in lab animals, including Zika vaccines successfully tested on mice, boosted hopes yesterday for a jab to shield humans against the brain-damaging virus.
Two prototype vaccines tested on lab mice “provided complete protection against the Zika virus” with just a single shot, reported the first team.
“These findings certainly raise optimism that the development of a safe and effective vaccine against Zika virus for humans may be successful,” said Dan Barouch, director of the Harvard Medical School’s Center for Virology and Vaccine Research, who co-authored a paper in Nature.
His optimism was echoed in a separate study into Zika infection in rhesus macaques — close genetic relatives of humans and well-matched animal models for medical testing.
In a study in sister journal Nature Communications, a US-based team said they managed for the first time to infect lab monkeys with the Zika virus.And they found that a single infection, mostly symptom-free as in humans, provided “complete protection” against later Zika exposure.
“This is a key finding because it means that a vaccine could be quite effective against the virus,” said study co-author Dawn Dudley of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“It also indicates that people who are already infected with Zika virus are not susceptible to future infection.”
Benign in most people, Zika has been linked to a form of severe brain damage called microcephaly in babies, and to rare adult-onset neurological problems such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome, which can result in paralysis and death.
About 1.5 million people have been infected with Zika in Brazil.
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