Dr. Maloney researched Zika and found outbreaks dating back to the 1950s. He also details how Zika interacts with other viruses in the same family and how the combination causes microcephaly and nerve damage. Dr. Maloney makes a strong case for recasting Zika as a sexually transmitted disease with a possibility of chronic infection.
Genre: HEALTH & FITNESS / Diseases / Nervous System (incl. Brain)Published this week in time for Olympics. 281,000 on kindle reads in two days, no data yet on book format.
Zika is part of a family of viruses. You might know some of them: yellow fever, Dengue, West Nile, and the impossible to pronounce Chikungunya virus. The family name is flavivirus, so think of them as different flavors of the same kind of virus. All these flavors live in mosquitoes, humans, and other animals. They are maintained by the transmission of blood and jostle with each other over which gets to infect what parts of the world.
If you catch a flavivirus, chances are you’ll feel like you have a cold. You’ll get fever, aching joints, and feel tired. Then you’ll get better. For most victims, that’s the entire disease process.
Only a few patients, just as they’re getting better, begin to have serious side effects. With yellow fever, this could include jaundice (turning yellow) and possibly bleeding from your eyes and mouth. Dengue can cause internal bleeding and organ failure. Chikungunya can cause joint pain, or damage the nerves, the eyes, or the heart. West Nile virus can cause nerve damage and paralysis. Zika can cause paralysis in adults and microcephaly when the virus attacks the nerves of a growing baby. Again, very few people get these severe symptoms. They are very rare but very concerning because we don’t have good treatments once they strike.
Over time the different viruses dominate in different regions of the world. So are all the members of the flavivirus family scheming about world domination? Is this a microscopic soap opera where different family members fight for global turf? Or do viruses act without intelligence, dumbly following a mechanical process like the falling of water or growth of crystals? We aren’t sure, because we aren’t even sure viruses are alive.
Let me explain using sex. It’s not exact, but more people have experience with sex than immunology.
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Portuguese
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Translation in progress.
Translated by André Weber
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Ana Rodríguez Díaz
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Author review: Ana worked through a stomach bug to make her translation deadline! |
