Zika a virus transferable to primates – Valley morning Star

Africa acts as Earths petri dish. The equatorial area of Africa is warm, wet, thick with vegetation and dense with animal life (monkeys and apes) that, unfortunately, share over 90 percent of their DNA with human beings. What nature creates in this naturally occurring biological warfare lab may start as a virus peculiar only to one biological sector, but can evolve into one peculiar to primates and at that point it is transferable to humans we are primates. Many nasty diseases, both viral and microbial, got their start in the upper story plants of Africa, adapted to monkeys and then were shared with humans: AIDS, Ebola, Hanta virus, MarburgZika. This list literally goes from A to Z.

Zika was first identified in Uganda in 1947 (though it may have developed during the late 1800s) at which time it was confined to monkeys. By 1952 the first human infection was reported. The disease then marched across the African continent from east to west along the hot zone: The Central African Republic, Nigeria, The Ivory Coast (Cte Diviore), Burkina Faso, Sierra Leon, Senegal and the islands of Cabo Verde. From Africa the disease was spread to Asia and Micronesia.

The first massive human outbreak occurred on Yap Island in 2007 in the western Pacific Ocean. Last year, there was great concern for Olympic athletes and those who were attending the summer games in Rio de Janeiro as Brazil reported thousands of cases of the virus. So far, over 35,000 cases have been reported in Puerto Rico, and 1,134 cases in Florida, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The Texas Department of State Health Services reports since 2015 there have been 333 cases of Zika in Texas, including two cases so far this year in Cameron County and six cases reported in 2016 in Hidalgo County.

Many of these cases are among people who have not traveled beyond our shores and who were infected by home-grown mosquitos.

So its clear that Zika is here. And it will spread.

This disease is a virus spread by both mosquitoes and the victims it infects. Once you are bitten by a Zika-bearing mosquito you will be infected. Some people have no symptoms, others feel like they have a mild cold and the worst afflicted suffer Gullian-Barre syndrome, which damages the nervous system. If you are pregnant the virus can attack your unborn child and result in microcephaly, that is, the skull of the infant will be truncated, the brain unable to develop and the child permanently and fatally impaired. Less discussed, but known for some time, is the fact that infected men can have the virus alive and transmissible in their sperm for close to a year.

Right now, Zika can be transmitted in three different ways. (1) A traveler to a Zika heavy area (like Central America) can be bitten by a mosquito and becomes infected. (2) That person returns to the United States and then is bitten by a local mosquito that acquires the virus and then passes it on to people in this country. (3) A person who is infected has unprotected sex and passes on the virus to their partner.

Zika is not the germ that wakes me up at night in a cold sweat. That position is occupied by the eventual evolution of bird flu to an airborne, human-to-human, contagion. That one will most certainly thin the herd and none of us will escape its sorrow. But Zika does remind all of us that, like the invading Martians of H. G. Wells War of the Worlds, which eventually succumbed to microbes of Earths atmosphere, we are always at risk from the smallest life forms on this planet.

Living things constantly change, not by plan but by accident. Some of those changes (like allowing a virus to live in multiple living things) help an organism live longer and stronger. That organism will flourish. This is called survival of the fittest. It is an example of evolution. Deny evolution and you deny science. Deny science and you deny reality.

Louise Butler is a retired teacher, college professor and published author who lives in Edinburg and regularly writes for The Monitors Board of Contributors.

Read this article:

Zika a virus transferable to primates - Valley morning Star