correction to my last entry Should we be testing tissues from GBS patients for Zika?
(Last entry - From what tissues in the body can you isolate Zika virus? - I would like to know whether a real try has been made to isolate the virus from the affected babies, or from infecting mothers and a,Lao if it can be isolated those with GBS should be tested).
Two of the main challenges with Zika are: establishing the causality (or not!) of the link with microcephaly; and determining the in vivo biology of the virus. Both of these are going to be difficult without a good animal model that uses Zika virus itself (as opposed to a surrogate related virus). Causality of the link with microcephaly might come with time and epidemiology, but if a true human-vector-human transmission cycle becomes endemic in the currently affected regions of South America, then the incidence of microcephaly would be expected to drop as the human population becomes increasingly seropositive - assuming there is no latency, and immunity through prior infection prevents a later re-infection. Thankfully, Zika does not appear to be a high mortality infection and the microcephaly does not appear to be a high mortality condition (at least initially). Because of this there will be few comprehensive pathology studies. so although it would be helpful to sample tissues from affected adults and newborns, there will be a limit to what types of sample of available. A priority should be developing a robust, clinically relevant model to give pointers to what tissues should be focused on.
Cheers,
David
I agree with David and would just add that until a causality model is established between microcephaly and Zika testing GBS patients would be a misdirection of effort and funding. Find the link if there is one between congenital birth complications and ZIKV, then widen the search to include other syndromes.
I think more data is needed for sure, and sending samples from a variety of sources is important. CDC recommends the following:
http://www.cdc.gov/zika/hc-providers/body-fluids-collection-sumbission.html
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