Since the first case was diagnosed in April 2015 in Brazil, the Zika virus has spread throughout the Americas. While mosquito-borne virus has fairly mild, flu-like symptoms, it's also thought to cause microcephaly, a birth defect in which babies are born with heads that are smaller than normal. Because mosquito bites are so hard to prevent and there's currently no vaccine or treatment for Zika, the World Health Organization has declared Zika a global public health emergency. Yesterday the governor of Florida declared a state of emergency in the state's nine counties in which cases of Zika have been diagnosed.
In 2013, almost 600,000 people died of malaria, a disease caused by a parasite passed to humans through mosquito bites. But these deaths--mostly among children in Africa--are preventable. For years researchers have been working on different tactics to reduce malaria's prevalence, such as creating innovative drugs or highly effective repellants as well as engineering the mosquitoes themselves to prevent the disease from spreading. After four years of tests on thousands of infants and children, an anti-malarial vaccine has emerged as one of the most promising candidates to prevent the spread of the disease. The results of the clinical trial are published this week in The Lancet.
For many people, warmer weather means more days spent in the sun and long evenings outdoors. It also means mosquito bites. Even if you're one of the lucky people that receives relatively few, you've probably noticed that not all people get bitten with the same frequency. And while frequent bites might simply be a nuisance for some, it could mean a much higher incidence of nasty diseases such as malaria, dengue and chikungunya in some parts of the world. According to a new study published in PLOS One, your genes have a lot to do with that.
