The Zika opportunity

I think, by now, everyone is updated about all the troubles Zika might be causing around the globe, especially in Brazil. 

Suddenly, all eyes were tuned to Brazil, not just to understand what is going on, how the virus and if the virus is really causing all the damage reported in fetuses, but also to try to collaborate and get samples to do their own studies. Although all the results are pointing to Zika as the causal agent of the microcephaly, everyone is still waiting the final proof. The connection between the virus and the disease is not easy. Robert Koch’s postulates were first defined to simplify and strategically indicate which important points should be proven first, and time is essential to prove the true link.

1. The organism must be regularly associated with the disease and its characteristic lesions.

2. The organism must be isolated from the diseased host and grown in culture.

3. The disease must be reproduced when a pure culture of the organism is introduced into a healthy, susceptible host.

4. The same organism must be re-isolated from the experimentally infected host.

It is already known that these postulates are not enough, especially in a virus-associated disease, so Fredricks and Relman added a few more, and they are updated with our current molecular biology techniques.

1. A nucleic acid sequence belonging to a putative pathogen should be present in most cases of an infectious disease. Microbial nucleic acids should be found preferentially in those organs or gross anatomic sites known to be diseased, and not in those organs that lack pathology.

2. Fewer, or no copy numbers of pathogen-associated nucleic acid sequences should occur in hosts or tissues without disease.

3. With resolution of disease, the copy number of pathogen-associated nucleic acid sequences should decrease or become undetectable. With clinical relapse, the opposite should occur.

4. When sequence detection predates disease, or sequence copy number correlates with severity of disease or pathology, the sequence-disease association is more likely to be a causal relationship.

5. The nature of the microorganism inferred from the available sequence should be consistent with the known biological characteristics of that group of organisms.

6. Tissue-sequence correlates should be sought at the cellular level: efforts should be made to demonstrate specific in situ hybridization of microbial sequence to areas of tissue pathology and to visible microorganisms or to areas where microorganisms are presumed to be located.

7. These sequence-based forms of evidence for microbial causation should be reproducible.

A rush in science knowledge and a great opportunity for the pharmaceutical industries could be seen in the last few months, since Brazil suggested the rare and unknown virus (for most of the world) as the villain in Brazil. 

This month, the Nature group have announced that all papers about Zika will be available for all the researchers in the whole word. This is amazing, because most of the universities outside US do not have access to the newest papers in the same week they are published. 

Science is about collaboration. The results discovered by any group will be applied to every country. So, why did this collaboration just appear in a crisis? Researchers are and should be cautious about how to collaborate with foreign researchers because they need to think about the fact that other countries have more money than Brazil for the research, and they should not be explored about the samples they have. It is a great time to put all the dots together, to collaborate, to publish and to help science advance one more step. One step at a time. 

The victims of this disease will have a long walk through difficult times. Even with so much pain in losing a child, they are donating and allowing studies among the babies that died after birth. The scientific community, and I know I speak for all of them, couldn’t be more thankful. Everyone is together in this fight against Zika.