A woman who apparently contracted the Zika virus while in American Samoa is being included in a vaccine study for the mosquito borne disease by the University of Hawaii.
The University of Hawaii’s application to conduct the vaccine study has just been approved by the Hawaii State Board of Agriculture.
According to a release from UH, one of the patients being interviewed and studied is a mother who caught the Zika virus while in the territory and gave birth last December.
The case is being compared to another mother who contracted the Zika virus from somewhere else.
UH says the baby born of one of the mothers had Microcephaly, a rare neurological condition where an infant’s head is significantly smaller than what it should be causing the brain to develop abnormally.
UH doesn’t say which of the mothers has the child with microcpehaly.
Dr. Vivek Nerurkar, Chair of the John A. Burns School of Medicine Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology and Pharmacology hopes to solve the mystery behind what causes the virus to cripple one baby and not the other.
The live sample of the Zika virus will be kept in a highly secure laboratory and Dr. Nerurkar is hoping to collaborate with other US institutions in finding a vaccine.
