Surviving Life-Threatening Dengue Fever May Protect Some People Against Zika Later In Life: Study

People who had had dengue fever before the 2015 outbreak of Zika may have been protected from the disease, a study suggests.

Pau da Lima, a slum city in the Salvador region of Brazil, was hit particularly hard by Zika. Over 70 per cent of the over 2.5 million people who live there contracted the mosquito born disease.

But while studying its spread, scientists from Yale University School of Public Health made an unexpected discovery.

Many of the small percentage of people who remarkably dodged the virus, shared something in common: they had had a particular strain of dengue fever before.

Dengue fever is a considerably more debilitating illness and may even be life-threatening to the person who actually contracts it, but those who survive may have an advantage against Zika, the new research suggests. The more of antibodies to that virus remained in the blood, the better protected from Zika they seemed to be - but not if they’d had dengue too recently.

Zika is transmitted a particular species of mosquito that thrives in tropical moments and bites both day and night.

In some places, like Pau da Lima, there’s hardly any way to avoid the disease-laden bugs. A single bite can transmit the brutal virus from the animal to a human. For the bitten person, the infection often isn’t so bad. But the virus can be passed to sexual partners and have devastating consequences for future generations. The Zika virus can pass from a pregnant woman’s blood system to her fetus and infect it during development.

It’s unclear how or why, but fetuses infected in the womb often develop a condition called microcephaly, which is marked by unusually small head size and brain defects.

The virus has also been linked to a rare nervous system condition called GuillainBarre syndrome (GBS) that causes significant muscle weakness and tingling and must be treated with blood or plasma transfusions as well as physical therapy.

Daily Mail