Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News
  • Published:

The missing pieces: Lack of Zika data from Africa complicates search for answers

Nature Medicine volume 23, pages 904–906 (2017)Cite this article

Subjects

Morris regularly travels to Kenya to distribute and study the impact of “survival kits” containing sterilizing gel and heating devices to help prevent infection and hypothermia in newborn babies, and thereby reduce infant mortality. He was interested to see evidence showing that Zika had once circulated in the region that he now visits. “I fairly easily found a [general survey] paper that showed, in the part of Kenya I work, there was Zika,” he says. His formal meta-analysis, published last August in BMJ Global Health, suggested that Zika was widespread across African countries from the 1950s to 1990s. The proportion of people whose blood contained antibodies to the virus—a indication of prior exposure—ranged from 2% of the population in places in Djibouti to 50% in some parts of Mali1.

Although infectious-disease researchers have known about Zika since its discovery in Uganda in 1947, the virus flew largely under the radar until 2015, when a surge of microcephaly cases tied to the virus in Brazil brought it to global attention. Most research into Zika in the past few years has focused on Latin America. Because of a dearth of viral surveillance and disease tracking—for Zika and other diseases—in Africa, “we just don't really understand the impact of this virus in Africa,” says Dawn Dudley, who studies Zika in rhesus macaques at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. Posen, H. et al. BMJ Glob. Health 1, e000087 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Herrera, B.B. et al. J. Infect. Dis. 215, 1546–1550 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Lanciotti, R., Lambert, A.J., Holodniy, M., Saavedra, S. & del Carmen Castillo Signor, L. Emerg. Infect. Dis. 22, 933–935 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Zhang, F. et al. Nucleic Acids Res. 44, 8610–8620 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  5. Cugola, F.R. et al. Nature 534, 267–271 (2016).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  6. Liu, Y. et al. Nature 545, 482–486 (2017).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Author notes

  1. Nicole Wetsman is Nature Medicine's news intern in New York.

    • Nicole Wetsman
Authors
  1. Nicole Wetsman
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Wetsman, N. The missing pieces: Lack of Zika data from Africa complicates search for answers. Nat Med 23, 904–906 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0817-904

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0817-904

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing