So to continue the Olympic theme for this week I will be
bring you some information about the Zika virus. So this has been a subject
which has been hotly debated in the run up to the Olympics with many different
news headline and lots of Olympians refusing to compete in the event due to the
risk.
Hopefully if you read a couple of these links hopefully you’ll
be able to get a very basic understanding of what the Zika virus actually is. I
say basic but it’s important to remember however that very little is known or
understood about this virus.
The virus does have some history however as it didn’t first
appear in April 2015 (when it started appearing in the media). The virus was
actually first recognised in 1947 in the Zika forest of Uganda, it wasn’t till
1952 however that it’s first found in humans. It then was another 55 years till there was a
recognised significant outbreak of the disease in the Island of Yap (2007).
WHO website has a some interesting information on the virus
and is the place I suggest that you you start using this link.
In 2016 a article was published in The New England Journal
of Medicine which proved that it was indeed the virus which was the source of
birth defects in babies.
There has been good news on the Zika front recently however,
this article talks about the production of a test which uses saliva to
establish whether a patient is infected with the virus.
Finally this post from science alert was published a little
over 10 days ago and gives a slight insight into the stages at which vaccines
are which will bring Zika outbreaks under control (hopefully)
Thanks for reading!
Check out this video from The North Face
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