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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Comparing strains of the Zika virus
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:02
	Publish Date:		2016-09-05 19:00:00
	Description:		The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a historic travel alert for pregnant women going to Florida, where over a dozen cases of the Zika virus have been reported. This makes the outbreak in South America now a lot closer to home. At the University of California, San Francisco, researcher Lenore Pereira discovered how the Zika virus can infect isolated placental cells. "We infected these cells with both the prototype African strain and the Nicaraguan strain from the new epidemics that have been associated with microcephaly." The first human cases of Zika were reported in Uganda in the 1950s. "We realized that it was an interesting comparison because the Ugandan strain required more virus to infect placental cells than the Nicaraguan strains. Somehow, cells were more susceptible to the Nicaraguan strains." But preventing the chain of infection from mother to fetus still remains a challenge.
	Total Play:		0