SUMMARY: Florida's battle against the outbreak of Zika is intensifying as the number of cases climbs. The state currently has 940 documented instances of the virus, with 230 in Miami-Dade County alone. Efforts to contain the spread of the disease focus on mosquito control and avoidance, but many details about Zika remain a mystery. For more on the outbreak, William Brangham reports from Miami.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): Beyond the famous sugar-white sands of South Beach in Miami, there's a clear sense of unease about the growing public health crisis here.
GOV. RICK SCOTT (R-Fla.):This means Florida has become the first state in the nation to have local transmission of the Zika virus.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Over the last few months, officials have been waging an all-out war against mosquitoes, spraying pesticides from the air, going door to door in some neighborhoods, checking plants and standing water, and plastering the city with warning signs, telling residents how to protect themselves from Zika.
There are now over 940 documented cases of Zika in the state of Florida and over 230 in Miami-Dade County alone. But the epicenter is here in Miami, and the largest number of locally-acquired Zika infections have occurred in these two neighborhoods.
How are people in Florida doing with this?
SAMMY MACK, Health Reporter, WLRN: The pregnant women that I have talked to, and their partners, or people who know pregnant women are taking it very seriously, and there's a lot of anxiety there. There's a lot of anxiety there.
Pregnant women should avoid nonessential travel to the county.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Sammy Mack is a health reporter for WLRN, the local NPR station in Miami. While she's eager to cover this big story, Mack has ended up in the middle of in it in a way she'd rather not. She's also four months pregnant.
SAMMY MACK: It became an issue of, OK, how — how am I going to cover this thing that is happening in the middle of my beat, in a way that is not putting me at any kind of additional risk?
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Mack took one of the free Zika tests offered by the state, but the results took weeks, and those delays can limit the options for pregnant women.
SAMMY MACK: I waited five weeks to get my results back.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In the middle of a pregnancy?
SAMMY MACK: In the middle of a pregnancy.
If women don't get their test turned around quickly and are waiting four weeks, six weeks, eight weeks, whatever it is, that may affect their window to decide to terminate the pregnancy. Florida restricts abortion past 24 weeks.
"RESEARCHERS CONFIRM ZIKA, BRAIN DEFECT LINK" by Bradley J. Fikes, San Diego Union-Tribune 5/12/2016
NOTE:This is from the online version of the newspaper, so no link to article.
UC San Diego, Brazilian scientists infect pregnant mice with virus and detect harm to their babies
Scientists from Brazil and UC San Diego said Wednesday that they have produced the world's first direct evidence of how the Zika virus causes brain defects. Previous research had inferred this mechanism, but never demonstrated it in the lab.
In their new study, the Brazilian and San Diego scientists worked with pregnant mice. They found that the Brazilian strain of Zika crossed the placenta and into the mice's pups, reducing growth in the brain and the rest of the body.
The brain defects were similar to the microcephaly reported in some human babies whose mothers were infected with Zika during pregnancy.
Additionally, the researchers discovered that the virus caused similar damage in brain “organoids,” which are peasized structures grown from human stem cells. In essence, the study confirmed earlier findings of Zika's effects on brain organoids, including a report published this month by UC San Diego scientists.
But one strain of mice resisted Zika, the latest study found. The pups of those mice didn't show any signs of infection and tested negative for the virus. This suggests that the virus never crossed the placenta in those cases.
This particular strain mounted a “robust” antiviral immune response, the report said. If the effect can be extended to humans, it would help explain why some Zika-infected mothers give birth to newborns who have no detectable brain damage.
Virus has already achieved pandemic status
The new study was published in the journal Nature. It can be found at Nature International Weekly. Zika's stealthy attack on fetal brains makes it especially worrisome. Unlike Ebola's direct and deadly assault, Zika is rarely fatal. Most infected people don't feel any symptoms. So if a pregnant woman is infected, the real damage may not be known until her baby is born. Another concern: Zika can harm fetal development at all stages of a woman's pregnancy. The Brazilian strain of Zika is more aggressive than the African strain, said UC San Diego's Alysson Muotri, one of the new study's authors and a Brazilian native. The two strains share about 90 percent of their genes, meaning that the 10 percent difference is responsible for making the Brazilian version more dangerous.
That fact represents a monumental challenge to Brazil, which is set to host the Summer Olympics in less than three months. People will travel to Brazil from around the world, possibly become exposed to Zika and carry the virus back to their home countries. Zika is usually carried by mosquitoes of the genus Aedes, but it also can be transmitted sexually. The virus has already achieved pandemic status, and it has been reported throughout the United States. San Diego County's first case this year was announced in February. The patient was a woman who had become infected while in Colombia. She was not pregnant at the time and has recovered fully, public health officials said.
From Jan. 1 through May 4, a total of 472 Zika cases were reported in the U.S., including 40 in California, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Pregnant women were involved in 44 of those cases, and 10 of the infections were sexually transmitted.
There has been no “homegrown” Zika infection by mosquitoes in the United States, health officials said.
However, the potential for transmission is present in the form of the Aedes Aegypti mosquito. The species, a relatively recent arrival in San Diego County, is black with white stripes. Scientists not involved in the new study said it meshes with results from previous research and shows a way forward for potential counter- measures.
“This report has revealed a new approach to investigate the pathological outcomes of Zika infection in innovative experimental models and is the first of its kind,” said medical virologist Grant Hill-Cawthorne at the University of Sydney in Australia. His comments were provided by the Australian Science Media Center. “It has shown the experimental models used can reflect the clinical presentation of Zika infection and thus serve as an excellent basis to understand the disease process and evaluate strategies for prevention,” Hill-Cawthorne said. Dr. Nathalie MacDermott, a clinical research fellow at Imperial College London, said: “The study lends further support to the likelihood that the damage to the infant resulting in microcephaly, microencephaly and brain malformations occurs during the first and second trimesters of pregnancy, a time when the infant's brain is rapidly developing and nerve cells are migrating to the correct regions.” Her comments were provided by the United Kingdom-based Science Media Center.
SUMMARY: The Food and Drug Administration announced Thursday that it would allow folic acid to be added to corn flour in order to prevent certain types of birth defects. The decision was a major victory for health advocates around the nation, who credit the additive with preventing some 1,300 birth defects per year. Judy Woodruff sits down with Dr. Jose Cordero of the University of Georgia for more.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): A major health announcement in the U.S.A Today.
The Food and Drug Administration said it will permit one of the B vitamins, folic acid, to be added to corn masa flour, used in making tortillas and other favorites of Hispanic households, this to help prevent neural tube birth defects, such as spina bifida.
Folic acid has been in fortify wheat flour since 1996, and is credited with preventing some 1,300 birth defects a year. Health advocates have long petitioned to include it in corn flour as well.
For more, Dr. Jose Cordero joins us. He is professor at the University of Georgia, former director of the National Center on Birth Defects. He is currently on the board of the March of Dimes, which is one of the groups that pressed for the change.
Dr. Cordero, thank you for being with us.
What’s your reaction to this announcement?
DR. JOSE CORDERO, University of Georgia: Well, it was tremendous joy.
This is just a tremendous occasion, that, finally, after 10 years of asking for having folic acid included in corn masa flour, finally, it’s here. And it is very important, because, right now, not only in Hispanic households, but we all in the country are eating more tortilla chips than we are eating potato chips.
So, it is an important source of having folic acid that could help us prevent some very serious birth defects like spina bifida.
MEGAN THOMPSON (NewsHour): And now an update to a story we first reported in January about the increasing number of pregnant women who are struggling with opioid addiction.
As a result, the number of babies born withdrawing from those drugs taken by their mothers, has also skyrocketed.
Tennessee is among the states hardest hit by this epidemic. It has the second-highest rate of opioid prescribing in the U.S. And the rate of babies born withdrawing from opioids is three times the national average.
In response, two years ago, Tennessee became the only state that explicitly allowed prosecutors to charge a mother with “fetal assault” for using drugs while pregnant.
Sponsors of the law say it was not intended to penalize women but to get them into treatment and protect the welfare of their babies.
But in a hearing this past week, Tennessee representatives voted to discontinue the controversial law which is set to expire in July 2016.
The measure was found not to help those women and to have unintended consequences.
Doctors testified that the threat of arrest kept many addicted pregnant women from seeking treatment and medical care. Other critics say addicts were choosing abortion over being found out and prosecuted.
At the hearing, lawmakers also discussed increasing funding for drug treatment programs.
SUMMARY: When women have defective mitochondria, their children can inherit terrible, sometimes fatal problems. A new technology, pioneered in England, adds healthy cellular structure from a third person, meaning that children are born with DNA from three people. William Brangham learns more from Jeffrey Kahn of Johns Hopkins University and Marcy Darnovsky of the Center for Genetics and Society.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Now to questions surrounding a significant advance in reproductive technology with DNA and embryos.
The change on the horizon was pioneered and approved in England and it is now being considered for use in the U.S. Proponents believe it may eliminate dangerous disease in children, but others have raised ethical concerns.
Today, the National Academy of Sciences recommended that clinical trials go forward in the U.S.
William Brangham has our look.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour): This new technology is called mitochondrial replacement technique, or MRT for shot.
Mitochondria are tiny structures that exist in nearly all the cells in our bodies, and have their own unique DNA. The problem is, a very small number of women have defective mitochondria, and if they have children, those kids inherit their mom’s mitochondria and can suffer terrible, sometimes fatal, problems, including brain damage and heart failure.
This new technology would, in essence, replace that original mitochondria in either the mother’s egg or in the parents’ embryo with healthy mitochondria from a third person. A child born this way would then be carrying the DNA of three different people.
Earlier today, patient advocate Laurie Strongin told us why the advance was so important for a small group of parents.
LAURIE STRONGIN, Patient Advocate: One of the things that we have found is that parents’ desire to have genetically related offspring is a widely held desire. It’s not universal, but it’s widely held.
And the potential to use MRT to have offspring who are genetically related to both parents is something that families who carry mtDNA disease really want. And not everyone is going to pursue it, but for the family for whom having children who are — who have a nuclear genetic connection to them, this is something that will just be one of numerous options available to them.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
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