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By Richard Westlund / Special to UM News — Under the Zika Research Grant Initiative, the Florida Department of Health in February 2017 awarded the University of Miami $13.1 million to fund 12 Zika research projects. Now, UM labs are bustling with teams of scientists working to detect the virus in its active, infectious stage or if there has been …
By Richard Westlund / Special to UM News — With no vaccine or treatment for the Zika virus, preventing transmission of the disease is a top public health priority. “We are mobilizing a multidisciplinary team looking at the ecology of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes, including mapping and spatial modeling,” said John C. Beier, professor of public health sciences and chief of the …
By Damian McNamara / Special to UM News — A team of University of Miami Miller School of Medicine researchers worked with a team of scientists at The Scripps Research Institute in California and investigators at other leading institutions to solve a mystery about the first U.S. outbreak of Zika virus in 2016. Sequencing the Zika virus RNA of infected people …
By Richard Westlund / Special to UM News — “We saw many pregnant women with typical signs of Zika on multiple UM medical missions to the affected region,” said Leonardo Tamariz, M.D., M.P.H., associate professor of medicine in the Division of Population Health and Computational Medicine. “We collaborated with Ecuador’s Ministry of Health and researchers from local universities to study the …
By Damian McNamara / Special to UM News — Does Zika infection cause some people to develop heart-related complications? Researchers at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine are looking to answer this question. They are recruiting people who have tested either negative or positive for Zika infection in the past six months to participate in a new trial. Previous …
By UM News — With South Florida facing the threat of a second Zika outbreak this summer, the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine’s Institute for Bioethics hosted an April 6 multidisciplinary forum for clinicians, public health professionals and government leaders on “Zika 2017: Where Do We Go Next?” “It is vital for key stakeholders to look at the implications …
By UM News — The University of Miami Miller School of Medicine will soon begin one of the nation’s first full-scale Zika vaccine clinical trials testing the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) experimental DNA-based vaccine. As Miami-Dade County has been ground zero for the Zika virus outbreak in the U.S., testing the vaccine in an endemic region is critical to help …
By Richard Westlund — Controlling the mosquito-borne Zika virus must continue to be a public health priority for South Florida, according to several University of Miami Miller School of Medicine clinicians and researchers who spoke Wednesday at a public hearing held by the Miami Beach City Commission. “We would not be here today if Zika were not a serious problem,” …
By Richard Westlund — University of Miami President Julio Frenk called on Congress to approve emergency federal funding for Zika research, treatment, and monitoring at a Zika forum hosted by UM Thursday. “We need to weigh the cost of inaction with the modest price tag of this proposal,” Frenk said, referring to a deadlock in Washington over allocating $1.1 billion …
By Robert C. Jones Jr. — A plane flies over Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood, spraying pesticides. A pregnant woman decides to work full-time from home, secluding herself to her Miami apartment—whenever she does venture outside, she dons long pants and a hooded sweatshirt, even with daily temperatures in the 90s. And Miami Police officers give away cans of mosquito repellent to …
