{"id":2952,"date":"2016-01-28T21:43:00","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T21:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/198.74.50.173\/2016\/01\/world-health-emergency-malformed-babies.html"},"modified":"2017-04-07T03:23:35","modified_gmt":"2017-04-07T03:23:35","slug":"world-health-emergency-malformed-babies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nextbigfuture.com\/2016\/01\/world-health-emergency-malformed-babies.html","title":{"rendered":"World Health Emergency – malformed babies caused by Zika Virus – NBF use gene drive to eliminate all Aedes mosquitos"},"content":{"rendered":"
WHO Director-General, Margaret Chan, will convene an<\/a> International Health Regulations Emergency Committee on Zika virus and observed increase in neurological disorders and neonatal malformations<\/p>\n Outbreak in the Americas<\/b><\/p>\n In May 2015, Brazil reported its first case of Zika virus disease. Since then, the disease has spread within Brazil and to 22 other countries and territories in the region.<\/p>\n Arrival of the virus in some countries of the Americas, notably Brazil, has been associated with a steep increase in the birth of babies with abnormally small heads and in cases of Guillain-Barr\u00e9 syndrome, a poorly understood condition in which the immune system attacks the nervous system, sometimes resulting in paralysis.<\/p>\n A causal relationship between Zika virus infection and birth defects<\/a> and neurological syndromes has not been established, but is strongly suspected.<\/p>\n \nZika virus is transmitted to people through the bite of an infected mosquito from the Aedes genus, mainly Aedes aegypti in tropical regions. This is the same mosquito that transmits dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Zika virus, linked to severe birth defects in thousands of babies in Brazil, is “spreading explosively”<\/a> and could infect as many as 4 million people in the Americas, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Thursday.<\/p>\n There is no vaccine or treatment for Zika, which is like dengue and causes mild fever, rash and red eyes. An estimated 80 percent of people infected have no symptoms. Much of the effort against the illness focuses on protecting people from mosquitoes and reducing mosquito populations.<\/p>\n Developing a safe and effective vaccine could take a year, WHO Assistant Director Bruce Aylward said, and it would take six to nine months just to confirm whether Zika is the actual cause of the birth defects, or if the two are just associated.<\/p>\n Gene drive could be used to eliminate the Aedes mosquitos<\/b><\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n The idea sounds appealingly simple: Quickly spread a gene through a population of animals in order to prevent it from transmitting disease, or, more directly, to kill a destructive species such as an agricultural pest. <\/a> Gene-drive technology is at the heart of such concepts. Gene drive shifts biases inheritance to favor certain versions of genes, a genetic alteration introduced into a few members of a population spreads rapidly throughout the entire population. If that alteration inhibits reproduction or survival in some way, gene drive can drive that population extinct in theory. In other uses, a desired trait could be driven through a population.<\/p>\n In July, geneticists showed that one gene drive system was almost 100% effective in spreading a mutated pigmentation gene through a population of lab fruit flies, fueling fears about the power of gene drive.<\/p>\n There are a number of reasons why gene drives may not be as useful, or scary, as some think:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \normally, it takes years for genetic changes to spread through a population. That is because, during sexual reproduction, each of the two versions of any gene has only a fifty per cent chance of being inherited. But a gene drive which is named for its ability to propel genes through populations over many generations manages to override the traditional rules of genetics. A mutation made by CRISPR on one chromosome can copy itself in every generation<\/b>, so that nearly all descendants would inherit the change. A mutation engineered into a mosquito that would block the parasite responsible for malaria, for instance, could be driven through a large population of mosquitoes within a year or two. If the mutation reduced the number of eggs produced by that mosquito, the population could be wiped out, along with any malaria parasites it carried.<\/p>\n
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