Yellow fever vaccine may also be effective against Zika

Yellow fever and Zika virus diseases , transmitted by mosquitoes that may be aedes aegypti , are two of the causes that have been worrying the entire national territory and even the world authorities.

These two infections have already led some Brazilian cities to declare an emergency situation because of the large number of cases, as in Minas Gerais due to the cases of Yellow Fever , recently.

In fact, in 2016 the World Health Organization (WHO) also declared a state of emergency in several countries, including Brazil, due to Zika outbreaks, linked to microcephaly.

These two diseases may even be similar in some ways, but yellow fever already has a vaccine that serves the entire country, and in the case of Zika, researchers are still looking for the immunizer.

Yellow fever vaccine may be the solution

The answer against Zika may be exactly in the vaccine of the other disease, yellow fever. And that is what a research done at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation suggests .

The results indicate that the yellow fever vaccine was also able to protect mice with Zika virus, in laboratory tests.

The immunizer also had the potential to reduce viral load in the brain, preventing the occurrence of cases of neurological deficiency.

However, according to the study’s authors, it is necessary to wait for more analysis of the results, through peer evaluation.

Basically, it is a method that contributes to the validation of the study, increasing the possibility of making contacts in the research communities of the international scientific community.

Read more: Yellow fever outbreaks in Brazil were caused by two mosquitoes

Similar diseases and low immunization

The researchers only used the yellow fever vaccine as part of the study after comparing two scenarios in Brazil.

They saw that the region of Brazil, where there was a greater number of Zika cases, was the northeast of the country and, subsequently, they observed that this region was the one with the lowest vaccination coverage against yellow fever.

Then, based on this hypothesis, they started using the vaccine for studies.

In addition, what contributed to these results being considered promising is that the biological structures of the viruses are similar, which can be taken into account to evaluate the effects of the vaccine.

The next step now is for the tests to be carried out on primates, so that the protection mechanisms against the Zika virus can be better observed.

If confirmed to be effective in humans, the result could be a breakthrough in the field of vaccines.

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