It’s like hitting two birds with one stone, but it’s viruses and one vaccine. Researchers from Yale University said that the proposed strategy to vaccinate against the Zika virus could also prove to be effective in the West Nile disease, another mosquito-borne virus that could cause potentially serious infection.
Common in North America, West Nile Virus belongs to the same family of flaviviruses as Zika. In a prior study, the team led by Section Chief for Infectious Diseases Erol Fikrig demonstrated that blocking a protein (AgBR1) found in the saliva of mosquitoes and transmitted to hosts could reduce Zika infection. For the latest study, they tested the same theory in mice exposed to West Nile by the same mosquito, Aedes aegypti.
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