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Zika virus is a flavy virus.
It's an infection, that's carried by mosquitoes.
And it causes an illness that's usually very mild.
It can even be asymptomatic.
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So, the Zika virus is transmitted by mosquitoes,
much like other viral illnesses, like Dengue or Chikungunya,
other viral illnesses.
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The Zika virus causes symptoms that usually sometimes they can
be asymptomatic, but if patients do have symptoms that's usually
fever, maybe some redness of the eyes, joint pains, and
kind of a general sense of malaise and aching,
kind of like having a flu.
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One of the reasons that the Zika virus is of so
much concern lately is not from the infection itself but
of the late consequences, particularly in pregnant women.
So this is what has caused the largest degree of concern.
Congenital abnormalities that have been linked to infection
of pregnant women with the Zika virus and
that has later affects on the fetus.
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There's currently no treatment for the Zika virus.
This doesn't cause much trouble.
As I said, usually, it's asymptomatic or
a very mild self-limited illness when it occurs, but
there's no treatment that's known for it.
If more severe disease occurs, treatment would
be supportive, meaning that you would support the patient
while they were recovering on their own from the illness.
In terms of a vaccine we don't have a vaccine for
this disease either but there are several candidate vaccines
that are in research stages right now.
And we're hopeful that perhaps within a year or so
we'll have some clinical trials ongoing with vaccines to prevent
this disease.
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Usually when patients get the Zika virus infection they
recover on their own.
Many times they don't even know that they had the infection, so
it's a mild or asymptomatic, self-limited illness and their
own immune system fights off the virus and they get better.
The most concerning aspect of this,
however, are the complications.
Two of the most prominent complications being a syndrome
called Guillain-Barre, which is a neurologic disorder that can
happen after a viral illness or
some other trigger that causes weakness and can actually
lead to respiratory failure and the need for supportive care
while the patient recovers from Guillain-Barre.
The second very concerning thing that has been
very prominently discussed of course is congenital
abnormalities that can happen if a woman is infected with Zika
virus while she's pregnant, and the most concerning of these is
microcephaly or babies that are born with severe neurologic
developmental delay, developmental abnormalities.
Small brain, small cranium, and some die.
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We certainly do have the mosquitoes here in
the United States.
Particularly in the Southern region of our country.
And those mosquitoes are capable of transmitting the Zika virus.
So I think we anticipate there will be some transmission
as the virus makes it's way through the America's as much as
countries in South America and
Central America have seen this virus move into their areas.
It could spread rapidly as anything that can be spread
by mosquito can certainly be transmitted by mosquito bites.
We have reason to believe that our mosquito control in this
country will protect us to some degree.
Things like air conditioning, mosquito control programs and
other features here in this country that have limited
the transmission of other mosquito borne illnesses,
like Dengue, for instance.
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So, at Johns Hopkins Medicine,
we are well positioned to address many aspects of
an infectious disease threat like the Zika virus.
For instance, at the Bloomberg School of Public Health,
we have many researchers who are doing vaccine development
research on similar diseases like Dengue.
And these efforts could be re-purposed to develop vaccines
for Zika virus infection, to prevent the infection.
From a patient care perspective, we also have infrastructure in
place to screen our patients for recent travel, and some of
these systems were put into place for Ebola virus disease.
And could easily be re-purposed to screen patients for
recent travel to areas that have Zika virus transmission.
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So I think when facing any infectious disease threat like
the Zika virus it's important to remain calm.
And to arm ourselves with the facts, and the Center for
Disease Control and Prevention is an excellent resource to
get that information, accurate information,
and to stay abreast of the current advisories,
and recommendations to protect ourselves.
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