Jenna Buzzacco-Foerster
The Zika virus may have been present in the Americas well before it was first identified in Brazil.
Research by infectious disease specialists at the University of Florida found that the virus was present in Haiti several months before it was identified in Brazil.
The virus was present in Haiti in December 2014 and Dr. Glen Morris, director of UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, said it may have been present “even before that date.” The first cases of ZIka in Brazil were identified in March 2015.
“There is a possibility that this virus had been moving around the Caribbean before it hit the right combination of conditions in Brazil and took off,” said Morris in a statement. “By using the sophisticated culturing and sequencing capabilities that we have here at the Emerging Pathogens Institute, we were able to begin to fill in some of the unknown areas in the history of the Zika virus, leading us toward a better understanding of what caused this outbreak to suddenly occur at the magnitude that it did in Brazil.”
Scientists from the university’s environmental and global health department and the Emerging Pathogens Institute isolated the Zika virus in three patients while studying the transmission of dengue and chikungunya in Haiti in 2014. The viruses were first considered a mystery, but further testing found that it was Zika.
John Lednicky, an associate researcher at the Emerging Pathogens Institute, said the Brazilian and Haitian strains are “genetically similar.”
The spread of Zika virus has been a concern in recent months. There have been 94 cases of Zika in Florida. All of those cases, according to the Department of Health, have been travel related.
The University of Florida findings were published Monday in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Researchers are hopeful further study will help explain what led to the proliferation of Zika in Brazil, and the rise in birth defects in cases where women were infected with the virus.
