sharon sanders
Editor-in-Chief & President
[h=1]Zika Virus in the Americas ? Yet Another Arbovirus Threat[/h]
snip
As was realized more than 50 years ago, when enzootic Zika virus spread was linked to human activity, arboviruses continually evolve and adapt within ecologic niches that are increasingly being perturbed by humans. Zika is still a pandemic in progress, and many important questions about it, such as that of teratogenicity, remain to be answered. Yet it has already reinforced one important lesson: in our human-dominated world, urban crowding, constant international travel, and other human behaviors combined with human-caused microperturbations in ecologic balance can cause innumerable slumbering infectious agents to emerge unexpectedly. In response, we clearly need to up our game with broad and integrated research that expands understanding of the complex ecosystems in which agents of future pandemics are aggressively evolving.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1600297
snip
As was realized more than 50 years ago, when enzootic Zika virus spread was linked to human activity, arboviruses continually evolve and adapt within ecologic niches that are increasingly being perturbed by humans. Zika is still a pandemic in progress, and many important questions about it, such as that of teratogenicity, remain to be answered. Yet it has already reinforced one important lesson: in our human-dominated world, urban crowding, constant international travel, and other human behaviors combined with human-caused microperturbations in ecologic balance can cause innumerable slumbering infectious agents to emerge unexpectedly. In response, we clearly need to up our game with broad and integrated research that expands understanding of the complex ecosystems in which agents of future pandemics are aggressively evolving.
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1600297