Sreemoyee Chatterjee
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Written By: Sreemoyee Chatterjee | Published : August 8, 2018 1:07 PM IST
Zika virus, which is a pandemic scare at present with no vaccine yet, may soon get a vaccine, preventing its spread among pregnant mothers and their foetuses who are the worst hit. All thanks to a team of researchers from Ohio State University who have come up with a uniquely designed experimental vaccine against Zika that has shown efficient results in mice. The scientists are using a two pronged approached for fighting the virus transmitted by mosquitoes. The vaccine is a single-dose one containing the genes for two or three Zika proteins and was found to effectively generate an immune response checking later infection by Zika virus, recently reported Deccan Herald. This study has been published in the journal, Nature Communications.
According to the media report, Jianrong Li, a professor at Ohio State University who has led the team of researchers, said: "In this study, the vaccine was potent, safe and highly effective, at least in the short term. There's a long way to go, but we think this is a promising candidate for a human vaccine." The research suggested that apart from complications and disorders including miscarriage, stillbirth, microcephaly, Zika virus can make your body contract Guillain-Barre syndrome, directly affecting your nervous system.
The media report has quoted Shan-Lu Liu, a study co-author from Ohio State University who said: "The experimental vaccine holds particular promise because it appears to afford an adequate immune response with one dose. In hard-to-reach and resource-poor areas, that becomes especially valuable." According to the researchers, they can use the same approach to tackle other viruses like the dengue fever.
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