zika virus look like

this is a story that began long ago, in asmall forest in uganda on the banks of a great lake....a story about something so tiny that it lived in the belly of a mosquito. yet loomed large in the imagination of a littleboy named andrew haddow, who learned of it from his grandfather’s tales. andrew grew up to be a scientist who studiesinsects, and this tiny somethinggrew into a terrible force, an epidemic we call zika. and when it left the forest to spread harmaround the earth,

andrew found himself in the middle of a sciencemystery... ...that began on a day long before he wasborn. april of 1947, the original isolation of zikavirus made by dick, kitchen, and my grandfather, alexander john haddow; he went by ‘alec.’ andrew’s grandfather, alec haddow, discoveredzika during a decades-long hunt for yellow fever in the rainforests of east africa. here's a picture of my grandfather. i mean, he looks like a pirate. he kind of just did his own thing.

the tales of his adventures inspired andrewas a young boy... ...stories of my grandfather going out intothe bush...about elephants and wildlife and everything...so exciting to a little kid. sometimes they were medical mysteries... ...numerous bedtime stories involving viruses his favorite: the stories about zika. i think why zika appealed to me was this ideaof the tower. this mythical, giant, steel tower. alec haddow designed this tower to conductexperiments in and above the tropical forest

canopyof uganda. and, you know, to a four or five-year-old,that's...pretty cool. ...catching mosquitoes, and studying monkeys... the tower had various platforms they would put monkeys up in the canopy toget bitten by mosquitos, in experiments designed to examine the spread of yellow fever in thejungle. if a monkey became sick, they tested its blood they were actually looking for yellow fevervirus. one day, when a bitten monkey became ill...

sentinel rhesus monkey number mr 766... ...their tests for yellow fever came up negative. they didn’t know what they had; they justknew they had something. and, it turned out it was a new virus. as is often the custom in virology, discoveriesare named after where they are found. and so haddow and his team named the virusafter the forest in uganda where their tower stood:zika. the lugandan spelling has two “i’s.” over the course of their expedition, the teamidentified and studied about a dozen viruses

in all. yet the discovery of zika virus drew littlenotice. i don't think they thought much of it; itwasn't associated with human illness— and so the virus slipped into obscurity inthe half century that followed... but andrew never forgot about zika. since i, you know, was 3 or 4 years old iwanted to be a researcher. i didn’t exactly know at the time whata researcher was, but i knew i wanted to do that. and he did.

in 2009, andrew came to the university oftexas medical branch to work with drs. scott weaver and robert tesh, in one of the fewplaces studying the zika virus. you could count them on one hand the number of laboratories doing anything with zika. they had the world’s largest collection... about thirty strains of the virus. ...including one that was very important toandrew... the prototype strain; the original isolationof zika. ...your grandfather’s virus. ...from his hand, in a sense, to my hand.

starting at zika’s origins, with the verystrain that his grandfather discovered... strain ibh...30...656... nigeria 1968 ...andrew set out to learn everything hecould about this virus, that was about to spread throughout the world. 41519... ...for over half a century, zika was mostlyconfined to the tropics through africa, india, and south east asia. it was a virus so rare, that only 14 confirmedcases of zika illness had ever been documented

in humans. but a series of unexpected events would challengeeverything they thought they knew about the virus. starting here on yap island... a very small island only about 7,000 peoplelive there, but more than half of them became infected with zika virus. it was just, "woah, you know. zika is causing an outbreak, like a big outbreak." but the outbreak was still characterized bya very mild disease, uh, fever, rash, nothing particularly serious...

or so they thought. zika had gone back into hiding. for now. but two years later, andrew would again crosspaths with the virus. and it would reveal a bizarre secret. something was very strange with this virus. something that i don’t think anybody couldanticipate. a medical mystery that andrew came upon andsolved, in a chance meeting. the diagnosis was made in a bar, over a beerin a bar in senegal.

it all started in the summer of 2009 wheni met kevin kobylinski. we started having a conversation. kevin's my graduate student. he's in australia right now. hey kevin. hey, brian. hey, andrew. we were talking about you and andrew in thebar in senegal. excellent.

after we talked about our various projects... right. right... kevin started to describe an illness thathe and brian came down with the year earlier. brian and kevin were in senegal working ona project. ...collecting mosquitoes out of people's huts... and when they flew back to fort collins, colorado,where they lived, they started to feel sick. brian and i started having similar symptoms. symptoms like a rash, headache, and jointpain.

and then, we had our blood drawn... and called up the cdc... the centers for disease control conducteda series of tests... dengue... yellow fever... chikungunya... ...for the usual suspects. and the results? negative.

negative, negative, negative. the most common ones were ruled out. they still didn't know what they had beeninfected with. kevin, brian, and the cdc were confoundedby this mystery illness. so, we stuck our serum samples in the freezerand left it for another day. and that day came when kevin and andrew hadtheir chance meeting in senegal. a year later, we're at this bar having thisdiscussion and, um, the picture became a lot more clear. first words out of your mouth were that thesymptoms sounded just like—

zika! at least that was andrew’s theory. what else is there? but he needed proof. i'm just like, "oh my god. we've got to get these samples..." like, i so wanted their blood. he said that the laboratory that he was workingat definitely could perform the antibody test. i’ll have dr. tesh run it.

then kevin takes a sip of beer and says, "well,there’s one more thing: brian's wife got sick too." his wife started having the rash and feelingbad and swelling in her joints. same signs and symptoms, very interesting. and she was not in southeastern senegal. no, she was not. what peaked their interest was this... the mosquitos that transmit zika live in warmplaces, like the tropics. if this was in fact a zika infection, howcould brian’s wife have possibly contracted

the disease in colorado? it's a tropical virus that can’t be transmittedby mosquitoes in northern colorado. they ruled out other means of transmissionas well. the smoking gun seemed to be a ratherunusual set of symptoms brian experienced: ...prostatitis and hematospermia... ...which is? ...blood in the semen and inflamed prostate. that's when we became excited about the possibilityof it being, uh, sexually-transmitted. sexually transmitted?

a very novel and risky hypothesis. totally out there. indeed. it was believed that the only way people couldget an infection like this, was through mosquitos. sexual transmission, if it were the case,would be a revolutionary finding. like saying a car can drive on a square wheels. but of course they were getting ahead of themselves... we had no idea what we actually even had...so... they hadn’t yet identified what the viruswas.

well, i have here the serologic results. then, dr. tesh revealed his findings. kevin, brian, and brian's wife had zika. i was like, "holy cow, it's zika”. grandfather would be so proud. andrew’s diagnosis, zika, was correct. mystery solved. but not much was made of their discovery ofthe sexual transmission. no.

because at this point, zika was thought tobe an obscure and mild virus. it at least was something that we needed tobe aware of, and maybe kind of keep on our radar, that this virus could do weird things. yet andrew could not be prepared for whatwas about to unfold. zika resurfaced in a tremendous outbreak. here in french polynesia about 200,000 peopleliving in that area, and more than half of them became infected with zika virus. an epidemic in the tropics—the final big“red flag” all of those people infected, many of themtraveling by air...

the virus spread all over the south pacific in the fall of 2015, zika struck hard in brazil. as it tore through the country, zika revealedits darkest secret, yet. and it was devastating... the zika virus appears to be a lot scarierthan first thought. all of a sudden we start getting reports ofneurological problems… ...congenital infections... ...a devastating birth defect... ...babies being born with microcephaly.

“microcephaly" “microcephaly” microcephaly—a devastating birth defectwhere a baby’s brain is smaller than normal. the result of improper neurological development. that zika could be responsible seemed almost unbelievable to andrew at first... microcephaly, it can’t be causing that. no one’s ever heard of anything like thisfor one of these viruses.

most virologists remained skeptical until a group of brazilian pediatricians observedthe connection between zika and these neurological birth defects. they led that charge that maybe zika’s causingmicrocephaly. and it turned out they were correct. now everyone looked at the virus in a wholenew light. from thinking about this virus as a very mildvirus—to now thinking it's one of the most dangerous. it was just so sad and overwhelming to seewhat this virus is doing to the most innocent

population: children. you know, it was this cool, mythical virus. it doesn't hurt anyone. nothing bad happens. so a door just slammed. the forest, and the tower...it was just kindof like, gone. “a public health emergency of internationalconcern...” “take a look at this map. the outbreak, moving north...”

air travelers returned to the united statesinfected by the virus... miami... texas, illinois... ...utah... ...california... ...ohio...and hawaii, all showing cases. and now we’ve seen local mosquito bornetransmission. “...zika virus by mosquitos...” “...right here in the u.s.”

dr. weaver expanded his team’s effortsto investigate how the virus could have turned into such a monster... ...to understand the disease process of microcephaly… ...and to search for a cure. ...developing anti-viral drugs as well asvaccines... “...zika virus spread through sex...” brian has returned to his research on sexualtransmission of the virus. the question is: how important? how prevalent it is relative to mosquito bornetransmission?

and andrew continues to investigate the mysteriousvirus his grandfather discovered in uganda so long ago. people are counting on all of us to get ananswer quickly. no one knows if zika will again cause sucha widespread crisis... yet another in a long line of viral outbreaksthat seemingly emerged from nowhere. there are probably a lot of viruses out therethat aren’t being discovered because field studies around the world have really fallenby the wayside in the last few decades. it may be that the best path forward in preparingfor future epidemics is a return to the practices of virus hunters like alec haddow...

we realize today they were ahead of the game, scientists who searched the tropical forestsof the world in a race to find viruses, before they foundus... ...and fired young imaginations, with a well-spun tale...or two.

Posted by exco

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