From the Lake County News
April 18, 2021

Notwithstanding February’s cold snap in Texas and Louisiana, climate change is leading to warmer winter weather throughout the southern U.S., creating a golden opportunity for many tropical plants and animals to move north, according to a new study in the journal Global Change Biology.

Some of these species may be welcomed, such as sea turtles and the Florida manatee, which are expanding their ranges northward along the Atlantic Coast.

Others, like the invasive Burmese python — in the Florida Everglades, the largest measured 18 feet, end-to-end – maybe less so.

Equally unwelcome, and among the quickest to spread into warming areas, are the insects, including mosquitoes that carry diseases such as West Nile virus, Zika, dengue and yellow fever, and beetles that destroy native trees.

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From The Daily Republic
April 16, 2021

FAIRFIELD — Nicer weather draws more people outside, and that draws mosquitoes.

“As the weather warms up and residents head outside, it’s important to protect yourself and your family from mosquito bites,” said Truc Dever, president of the Mosquito and Vector Control Association of California, in a statement. “Doing a weekly check around your yard and dumping and draining all standing water is an easy way to eliminate mosquitoes in your community.”

At the top of concerns about mosquito bites is the West Nile virus.

There is no human vaccine for the virus, a disease that can cause debilitating cases of meningitis, encephalitis and even death.

“In 2020, there were 231 human West Nile virus disease cases from 26 counties in California, including 11 human deaths. Since 2003, more than 7,000 human disease cases were reported including more than 300 deaths,” the association reported.

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From The Daily Campus
April 8, 2021

A University of Connecticut associate professor recently had successful results in animal trials and is moving onto the next steps to produce a Zika virus vaccine.  

Paulo Verardi, associate professor of virology and vaccinology, with help from then Ph.D. student Brittany Jasperse, were among the first researchers to file for a grant with the National Institutes of Health and receive a federal grant to work on a Zika vaccine.  

In the pre-clinical animal trials, the mice that were given a single dose Zika virus vaccine showed no sign of the disease in their bodies or blood. For the ones in the placebo group who did not receive the vaccination, they did allow replication of the virus.  

“The animals that were vaccinated did not show evidence of virus replication,” Verardi said. “We could not detect the virus in them.”  

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From Pasadena Now
April 6, 2021

The San Gabriel Valley saw no deaths from West Nile virus during the pandemic lockdown, and vector control officials say they are hoping to continue the trend by reminding residents to get rid of standing water on their properties to prevent the mosquitoes that transmit the illness, and others, from breeding.

The region generally sees several deaths from West Nile virus each year, San Gabriel Valley Mosquito & Vector Control District spokesman Levy Sun said.

“But in 2020, we didn’t see that at all. And we were really, really grateful for everyone’s participation in mosquito control. Because we always say mosquito control is a shared responsibility. And 2020, despite all the odds, proves that to be true.

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From NBC KOBI
April 5, 2021

JACKSON COUNTY, Ore. — As the weather gets warmer, Jackson County Vector Control wants to remind you to protect yourself and your pets.

Mosquitoes and ticks come out as the seasons change, they can carry diseases like West Nile Virus and Lyme Disease.

Biologists at the vector control center said there are ways to stay safe this spring and summer.

“If they can look for any kind of sources that might be in their backyard or close to them,” said Jeoff Taylor with Jackson Co. Vector Control,” uncovered boats that the plug may still be in, or the leaves are up against it and create a big pool or pocket of water.”

People are encouraged to vaccinate their pets, wear repellent or long sleeves and pants. Officials said you can protect your home by using screens on windows and doors.

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From Science Daily
April 1, 2021

UConn researcher Paulo Verardi, associate professor of pathobiology and veterinary science in the College of Agriculture, Health and Natural Resources, has demonstrated the success of a vaccine against Zika virus and recently published his findings in Scientific Reports, a Nature Research publication. He has also filed provisional patent for the novel vaccine platform technology used to generate the vaccine, as well as genetic modifications made to the vaccine that significantly enhance expression of the vaccine antigen.

From Cal Poly News
March 2021

SAN LUIS OBISPO — A new study from Cal Poly and the University of South Florida (USF) is the first to provide direct evidence that light pollution is driving infectious disease patterns in nature.

The research team previously determined mosquitoes and birds are attracted to artificial light at night, greatly enhancing the likelihood that the insects will spread West Nile virus to animals and humans.

Their new findings published this week in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society B” are in contrast to previous studies that have blamed urbanization due to its human population density and breeding hotspots, such as drainage systems.

“Research from our team members at USF had shown in lab-based studies that light pollution could potentially influence West Nile virus risk,” said Clinton Francis, a Cal Poly biology professor and corresponding study author, “but our study is the first to show how light pollution can affect risk of West Nile virus in the real world, and better explains patterns of risk than environmental variables previously thought important.”

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From Washington University in St. Louis
March 24, 2021

The Zika virus that ravaged the Americas, leaving many babies with permanent brain damage, may have a silver lining. The virus can activate immune cells to destroy an aggressive brain cancer in mice, giving a powerful boost to an immunotherapy drug and sparking long-lasting immunological memory that can ward off tumor recurrence for at least 18 months, according to a study from researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

The findings, available online in the journal JCI Insight, suggest Zika virus might be a key to unlocking the power of immunotherapy for glioblastoma, a lethal brain cancer that typically results in death within two years. Immunotherapy aims to turn the body’s own immune system into a weapon to eliminate cancer cells. The approach has proven effective for blood, skin and some other cancers, but it has so far shown limited benefit for glioblastoma patients.

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From SCVNews.com
March 22, 2021

As Southern California residents, water conservation is part of our lifestyle and rain barrels are an easy way to capture rainwater for future use.

However, if not properly maintained, rain barrels can become an ideal breeding source for mosquitoes.

Learn how to mosquito-proof your rain barrel and continue to conserve water throughout the year while still controlling mosquitoes.

If residents need to store water in rain barrels, buckets, or other similar containers longer than a week, these step should be taken to ensure they are mosquito-proof:

– Cover all water-filled containers with tightly fitting lids.

– Screen all openings (overflows, openings in the lid), including roof and floor gutters with a 1/16-inch fine mesh to keep mosquitoes out.

– Use collected water right away and empty barrels completely between rain events.

– Check the screens for tears/holes monthly to prevent mosquitoes from entering the container and
– laying hundreds of eggs.

– Use mosquito bits if you must keep stagnant water for more than five days.

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From WTSP
March 17, 2021

From the Cache Valley Daily
March 17, 2021

LOGAN —  While most people consider mosquitos an annoying pest according to pest control jacksonville fl, Utah State University Assistant Biology Professor Norah Saarman wanted to examine how they can spread infectious diseases.

“Our goal was to use images from space to see if we could predict how distant genetic mosquitos were or are across the landscape,” Saarman said. “What’s new about this is that we combined several approaches, one of those is called machine learning and it’s a really flexible way to ask if you can predict data.”

Saarman was also working to study the genetic connectivity of Aedes aegypti, an invasive species to North America that’s become widespread in the United States.

With Evlyn Pless of the University of California, Davis and Jeffrey Powell, Andalgisa Caccone and Giuseppe Amatulli of Yale University, Saarman published findings from a machine-learning approach to mapping landscape connectivity in the February 22, 2021 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The team’s research was also supported by the National Institutes of Health.

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From the National Institutes of Health
March 10, 2021

The mosquito protein AEG12 strongly inhibits the family of viruses that cause yellow fever, dengue, West Nile, and Zika and weakly inhibits coronaviruses, according to scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and their collaborators. The researchers found that AEG12 works by destabilizing the viral envelope, breaking its protective covering. Although the protein does not affect viruses that do not have an envelope, such as those that cause pink eye and bladder infections, the findings could lead to therapeutics against viruses that affect millions of people around the world. The research was published online in PNAS.

Scientists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of NIH, used X-ray crystallography to solve the structure of AEG12. Senior author Geoffrey Mueller, Ph.D., head of the NIEHS Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Group, said at the molecular level, AEG12 rips out the lipids, or the fat-like portions of the membrane that hold the virus together.

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From EurekAlert!
February 25, 2021

ROCKVILLE, MD – The Zika outbreak of 2015 and 2016 is having lasting impacts on children whose mothers became infected with the virus while they were pregnant. Though the numbers of Zika virus infections have dropped, which scientists speculate may be due to herd immunity in some areas, there is still potential for future outbreaks. To prevent such outbreaks, scientists want to understand how the immune system recognizes Zika virus, in hopes of developing vaccines against it. Shannon Esswein, a graduate student, and Pamela Bjorkman, a professor, at the California Institute of Technology, have new insights on how the body’s antibodies attach to Zika virus. Esswein will present the work, which was published in PNAS, on Thursday, February 25 at the 65th Biophysical Society Annual Meeting.

Zika virus is a kind of flavivirus, and other flavivirus family members include dengue, West Nile, and yellow fever virus. To protect against these and other pathogens, “we have the ability to make a huge diversity of antibodies, and if we get infected or vaccinated, those antibodies recognize the pathogen,” Esswein said. But sometimes when the body mounts an immune response against a flavivirus, there is concern that this response could make the person sicker if they get infected a second time. Called antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE), this happens when the antibodies stick to the outside of the virus without blocking its ability to infect cells, which can inadvertently help the virus infect more cells by allowing it enter cells that the antibodies stick to.

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From Palo Alto Online
February 25, 2021

On Friday, Santa Clara County plans to hover over the Palo Alto Flood Basin — an area known to be a mosquito breeding ground around this time of the year — to release a specific bacteria found in soil to stunt mosquitoes from maturing.

The county’s Vector Control District, which was formed to combat diseases transferred to humans from parasites and other wildlife, is scheduled to fly low in a helicopter on Friday around 7:30 a.m. to spray the area. The process is expected to last a few hours, according to the county.

“We follow the mosquito management best practices recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency,” Vector Control District Manager Dr. Nayer Zahiri said in a county press release Wednesday. “These efforts have been proven to be safe and effective for more than 25 years.”

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From MedicalXpress
February 16, 2021

The Zika virus candidate, Ad26.ZIKV.001, a replication-incompetent human adenovirus serotype 26 (ad26) vector showed promising safety and immunogenicity in a phase I clinical trial. Researchers say the vaccine warrants further development should the need reemerge. The findings are published in Annals of Internal Medicine.

Zika virus (ZIKV) infection is transmitted via mosquito or sexually and may cause severe congenital disease after maternal-fetal transmission. The incidence of Zika virus has declined since the 2015-2016 outbreak, but geographic expansion of the Aedes aegypti mosquito to areas where population-level immunity is low poses a substantial risk for future epidemics. Currently, no vaccine is available.

Researchers from Janssen Vaccines and Prevention and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center randomly assigned 100 healthy participants to either a 1- or 2-dose regimen of Ad26.ZIKV.001 or placebo to assess the safety and immunogenicity of the Zika vaccine candidate. They found that 2 doses of Ad26.ZIKV.001 were safe, caused mild to moderate reactogenicity, and induced persistent neutralizing antibody responses.

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From UC San Diego
February 11, 2021

Despite the broad notoriety of sharks, snakes, scorpions and other formidable creatures, mosquitoes remain the deadliest animal on the planet… by far. Mosquito-transmitted malaria remains the number one worldwide killer among vector-borne diseases, claiming more than 400,000 human lives in 2019.

In order to engineer advanced forms of defense against malaria transmission, including targeted CRISPR and gene drive-based strategies, scientists require intricate knowledge of the genomes of vector mosquitoes.

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From EurekAlert!
February 3, 2021

Tampa, FL (Feb. 3, 2021) — A preclinical study by a University of South Florida Health (USF Health) Morsani College of Medicine research team has discovered a new mechanism for how Zika virus can pass from mothers to their children during pregnancy – a process known as vertical transmission.

The researchers showed, for the first time, that specialized cells lining the uterus (maternal decidual cells) act as reservoirs for trimester-dependent transmission of the virus through the placenta – accounting for both the fetus’s greater susceptibility to first-trimester Zika infection and for the more serious congenital defects observed in early versus late pregnancy. They also report that the agent tizoxanide inhibits ZIKA virus in maternal decidual cells grown in the lab, offering promise for preventing perinatal transmission that can cause devastating malformations and brain damage in developing fetuses and infants.

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From Cal State Fullerton
February 2, 2021

With no treatment or cure for West Nile virus — spread through the bite of an infected mosquito — Cal State Fullerton undergraduate researcher Shaina Nguyen is working on creating new therapeutics to treat people infected with the disease.

“Hopefully, our research could provide possible drug therapeutics to stop West Nile virus,” Nguyen said.

Since her freshman year, Nguyen, a biochemistry major who is graduating in May, has worked in the lab of Nicholas T. Salzameda, associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry. The researchers are seeking treatments since there is no vaccine or medications available for the mosquito-borne disease. 

In the ongoing study, the faculty-student research team is studying a viral protein for the West Nile virus, known as the NS2B-NS3 protease, which is responsible for producing viral particles for replication and is a promising therapeutic target in stopping infection, Nguyen said.

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From Business Ghana
January 31, 2021

A new malaria mosquito is emerging in African cities, with potentially devastating consequences for those living there, according to a new study.

The larvae of Anopheles stephensi — India’s main mosquito vector of malaria — are now “abundantly present” in locations across Africa, researchers from The Netherlands’ Radboud University Medical Center and Ethiopia’s Armauer Hansen Research Institute said. Vectors are living organisms that can transmit infectious pathogens between humans, or from animals to people.

This mosquito species only appeared in Africa a few years ago. Now, this invasive insect is “abundantly present” in water containers in cities in Ethiopia — and highly susceptible to local strains of malaria, researchers have said.

Most African mosquitoes that can transmit malaria are known to breed in rural areas. However, experts were already concerned this particular mosquito has found a foothold in urban areas, including cities in Ethiopia, Sudan and Djibouti, which researchers said could increase the malaria risk for urban populations.

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From EurekAlert!
January 26, 2021

COLUMBIA, Mo. – In 2016, the World Health Organization called the Zika virus epidemic a “public health emergency of international concern” due to the virus causing birth defects for pregnant women in addition to neurological problems. Since then, researchers have wrestled with different strategies for controlling the spread of Zika virus, which gets transmitted to humans from female mosquito bites.

One approach, which was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency in May, will release more than 750 million genetically modified mosquitos into the Florida Keys in 2021 and 2022. These “suicide mosquitos” are genetically-altered to produce offspring that die before emerging into adults and therefore cannot bite humans and spread disease.

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From 16 News Now
January 22, 2021

SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WNDU) – While the world is in a rush to find a way to kill off COVID-19, another virus is making a comeback in an unexpected way.

Neuroblastoma is the most common cancer in kids under age one.

In two out of three cases, the cancer has already spread by the time of diagnosis.

Martie Salt has details on how researchers are using the zika virus to treat this devastating childhood cancer.

The team is now focused on perfecting dosages and identifying which tumors the zika virus will attack.

The researchers say this treatment could also be effective against brain tumors.

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From Yahoo News
January 7, 2021

From EurekAlert
January 7, 2021

New treatments to cut the global death rate from dengue, Zika and West Nile viruses could result from research led by The University of Queensland.

Associate Professor Daniel Watterson from UQ’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences said the team identified an antibody that improved survival rates in laboratory trials and reduced the presence of virus in the blood.

“We made a discovery in 2015 in the wake of the Zika outbreak that identified a new target for flavivirus treatments, a viral protein called NS1,” Dr Watterson said.

“Now we’ve shown for the first time that a single NS1 antibody can be protective against multiple flaviviruses including dengue, Zika and West Nile.

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From Physicians Weekly
December 31, 2020

Flaviviruses bear class II fusion proteins as their envelope (E) proteins. Here, we describe the development of an in vitro quantitative mosquito-cell-based membrane-fusion assay for the E protein using dual split proteins (DSPs). The assay does not involve the use of live viruses and allows the analysis of a membrane-fusion step independent of other events in the viral lifecycle, such as endocytosis. The progress of membrane fusion can be monitored continuously by measuring the activities of luciferase derived from the reassociation of DSPs during cell fusion. We optimized the assay to screen an FDA-approved drug library for a potential membrane fusion inhibitor using the E protein of Zika virus. Screening results identified atovaquone, which was previously described as an antimalarial agent. Atovaquone potently blocked the in vitro Zika virus infection of mammalian cells with an IC of 2.1 µM. Furthermore, four distinct serotypes of dengue virus were also inhibited by atovaquone with IC values of 1.6-2.5 µM, which is a range below the average blood concentration of atovaquone after its oral administration in humans. These findings make atovaquone a likely candidate drug to treat illnesses caused by Zika as well as dengue viruses. Additionally, the DSP assay is useful to study the mechanism of membrane fusion in Flaviviruses.

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From the UC Santa Cruz News Center
December 16, 2020

For over ten years, Ali Yanik has been working to develop novel biosensor technology to provide rapid, low-cost testing for disease diagnostics and precision medicine. Now, with a five-year, $3.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, he and his collaborators are poised to complete the development and validation of a prototype and begin testing it in the field for detection of dengue fever, yellow fever, and Zika virus infections.

“We’re confident in being able to do this and get it into the field for testing,” said Yanik, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the Baskin School of Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. “It’s pretty revolutionary because this is a very simple tool, and yet it is also very sensitive.”

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From EurekAlert!
December 16, 2020

Scientists have developed a novel smartphone-based technique to diagnose viral infections that uses a deep learning algorithm to identify viruses in metal nanoparticle-labeled samples, enabling rapid virus detection without the need for skilled laboratory workers and expensive equipment. The system correctly identified clinically relevant concentrations of Zika, hepatitis B (HBV), or hepatitis C (HCV) in 134 patient samples with 98.97% sensitivity. Mobile phone subscribers are on the rise worldwide, including in sub-Saharan African populations that are heavily burdened by infection outbreaks. Since these widely available technologies also possess powerful new computing abilities and built-in sensors, scientists have identified mobile phones as a promising tool to help manage infectious diseases worldwide. 

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From EurekAlert!
December 10, 2020

The Zika virus can remain in mouse brain for extended periods, leading to long-term neurological and behavioral consequences, according to a study published December 10 in the open-access journal PLOS Pathogens by Daniela Verthelyi of the US Food and Drug Administration, and colleagues.

Infections in the perinatal period are associated with lasting cognitive impairment and increased risk for psychological disorders. The congenital brain malformations associated with Zika virus infections early in pregnancy are well documented. But the potential defects and long-term consequences associated with milder infections in late pregnancy and the perinatal period are less well understood. To address this knowledge gap, Verthelyi and colleagues exposed one-day-old mice to the Zika virus and monitored the neurological and behavioral consequences up to one year later.

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From EurekAlert!
December 10, 2020

Flaviviruses — a group of viruses transmitted by ticks or mosquitoes — infect an estimated 400 million people annually with diseases like yellow fever, Dengue fever, West Nile virus, and, most recently, Zika virus.

Outbreaks of Zika virus, a flavivirus originating in Africa, were once rare and isolated events. But in 2015, it arrived in the Americas and rapidly spread to 27 countries within the span of a year.

Zika virus outbreaks have now been recorded throughout Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, South America, and Central America. To protect the health of billions of people at risk and prevent future outbreaks, a team of Virginia Tech researchers received a $2 million R01 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a safe, effective, single-dose vaccine candidate for Zika virus.

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From Gilmore Health News
December 6, 2020

A study of 3,000 children during an outbreak in Nicaragua showed that those previously infected with dengue were less likely to develop Zika symptoms. Both Zika and Dengue viruses are, transmitted by the same type of mosquitoes and cause similar symptoms.

The dengue virus has been present in the Americas for decades, while Zika did not appear in Brazil until 2015, before spreading rapidly. The dengue and Zika viruses are transmitted by the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito and cause similar symptoms to the flu: fever, muscle, and joint pain, etc. There may also be redness in the skin.

However, in pregnant women, a Zika infection can lead to serious disturbances in the development of the fetus, especially microcephaly. Neurological complications (Guillain-Barré syndrome) are also possible in infected women. However, Zika infection is often asymptomatic.

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From MedicalXpress
December 4, 2020

Anopheles malaria mosquitoes in Africa and Latin America are evolving in response to human activity, studies in both continents have found.

Anopheles gambiae, the most significant malaria vector in Africa, is developing increasing resistance to pyrethroid insecticides, a study published in Scientific Reports this month shows. Synthetic pyrethroids are the most commonly used insecticide for controlling malaria mosquitoes worldwide.

The team of researchers from Kenya, Ghana and the US say the indiscriminate use of pyrethroid insecticides in agriculture and public health programs could be responsible for the moderate and high-intensity resistance.

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