Experts Near Nation's Capital Discuss Zika Research
WASHINGTON D.C. (KDKA) -- Near the nation's capital, the Rand Corporation is in a position to help in the fight against Zika.
"A large number of us are trying to think about ways that we can provide analytic support to some of the policy decisions underway," Dr. Melinda Moore with Rand said.
The experts in health, economics, political science, demography, sociology and anthropology who work at this think tank can survey the public about risk reception, and they can work out modeling to see the effect of different interventions.
For instance, what would be the impact of some countries calling for women to avoid pregnancy for two years?
"Whether or not that's a practical policy intervention is unclear, but what are the demographic implications for a two-year hiatus in pregnancies?" Moore said.
Dr. Moore worked on Dengue virus for the CDC before coming to Rand as an outbreaks expert.
"Somehow people in Brazil connected dots that would ordinarily not be connected," she said.
Because Zika is similar in many ways to Dengue, she hit the ground running with this emerging threat of Zika.
"I was familiar with the mosquito vector, I was familiar with flaviviruses, the same family of viruses," she said.
If she were in charge of policy, of highest importance would be surveillance. For example, standardizing the definition of microcephaly and monitoring the number of cases here in the United States, and also checking for Zika in the carriers of this virus.
"Infection in mosquitoes, surveillance for mosquitoes, will be a kind of harbinger, or a leading indicator, with what we might expect with regard to the virus," Moore said.
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From Rand to the National Institutes of Health, the Washington D.C. area is full of expertise springing into action.
Dr. Avindra Nath is a nerve and infection specialist with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. He has studied other viruses that infect the brain, but Zika is different in its focused attack on the brain and nerve tissues.
"When the brain is still in the early stages, that tells me that likely the virus is infecting stem cells within the brain itself," Nath said.
While the circumstantial evidence is strong, the first priority is to establish that Zika indeed causes microcephaly. Once that's in place, further steps can be taken. For example, researchers can infect brain cells with Zika virus along every stage of development to see what happens.
"I've been putting together protocols for doing all the work, as well as the animal models, as well as the in-vitro models, so we are heavily into it already," Nath said.
"Science always moves at a pace that can never be predicted," he said. "It always takes longer than one thinks, but the enthusiasm is there, and the energy is there, so we will certainly do the best we can."
