DjDiverDan
Contributor
I just learned something new, and while extremely interesting (well, at least to me, but I find lots of weird things interesting), I'm not sure whether to put this into the category of "God works in mysterious ways" or "every cloud has a silver lining."
Many of you may remember the mass public hysteria over the Zika Virus, a mosquito borne illness that became very common in a number of tropical locations, including Rio de Janeiro before the last Summer Olympics and, apparently, Cozumel. The Zika virus caused a big scare, including a few posts on this board, because it was thought to be responsible for some horrifying birth defects if pregnant mothers became infected - children born to mothers infected by the Zika virus had a much higher chance of being born with microencephaly, a defect characterized by very low development of the brain and abnormally small heads. Microencepalic children were almost invariably severely mentally retarded, sometimes to the point where the brain was incapable of maintaining essential bodily functions so the baby died.
Research into the Zika virus showed that it selectively attacked neuroprogenitor cells - the cells in a growing embryo/fetus destined to develop into neurons in the baby's brain. Thus, it was very dangerous for unborn children. Adults have almost zero neuroprogenitor cells, so, with the exception of expecting or potential mothers of unborn children, Zika posed very little risk to adults; many healthy adults would not even notice the minimal symptoms of a Zika infection, a mild fever (triggered by immune response), mild headaches, and occasionally a rash.
BUT, and here is what is really interesting, it turns out that the Zika virus is unable to distinguish between neuroprogenitor cells in a fetus and gioblastoma stem cells, the cells that create brain tumors in the most common form of adult brain cancer. Gioblastoma is an incredibly dangerous, very hard to treat brain cancer, and even if surgeons can remove most of a brain tumor with surgery without causing severe injury to healthy brain tissue, any gioblastoma stem cells left behind will multiply creating new brain tumors within 6 months. Cancer researchers, after testing the effect of the Zika virus on cultured gioblastoma stem cells, ran a study on volunteers test patients with gioblastoma, and after being infected with the Zika virus, a statistically significant portion of the study group had their brain tumors shrink by more than two-thirds.
Still not an FDA-approved therapy, but if I get diagnosed with gioblastoma brain cancer, I'm heading to Cozumel to hang out the swamps and hope to get bitten by lots of those Zika-carrying mosquitoes!
Glioblastoma Stem Cells May Be No Match for the Zika Virus
Many of you may remember the mass public hysteria over the Zika Virus, a mosquito borne illness that became very common in a number of tropical locations, including Rio de Janeiro before the last Summer Olympics and, apparently, Cozumel. The Zika virus caused a big scare, including a few posts on this board, because it was thought to be responsible for some horrifying birth defects if pregnant mothers became infected - children born to mothers infected by the Zika virus had a much higher chance of being born with microencephaly, a defect characterized by very low development of the brain and abnormally small heads. Microencepalic children were almost invariably severely mentally retarded, sometimes to the point where the brain was incapable of maintaining essential bodily functions so the baby died.
Research into the Zika virus showed that it selectively attacked neuroprogenitor cells - the cells in a growing embryo/fetus destined to develop into neurons in the baby's brain. Thus, it was very dangerous for unborn children. Adults have almost zero neuroprogenitor cells, so, with the exception of expecting or potential mothers of unborn children, Zika posed very little risk to adults; many healthy adults would not even notice the minimal symptoms of a Zika infection, a mild fever (triggered by immune response), mild headaches, and occasionally a rash.
BUT, and here is what is really interesting, it turns out that the Zika virus is unable to distinguish between neuroprogenitor cells in a fetus and gioblastoma stem cells, the cells that create brain tumors in the most common form of adult brain cancer. Gioblastoma is an incredibly dangerous, very hard to treat brain cancer, and even if surgeons can remove most of a brain tumor with surgery without causing severe injury to healthy brain tissue, any gioblastoma stem cells left behind will multiply creating new brain tumors within 6 months. Cancer researchers, after testing the effect of the Zika virus on cultured gioblastoma stem cells, ran a study on volunteers test patients with gioblastoma, and after being infected with the Zika virus, a statistically significant portion of the study group had their brain tumors shrink by more than two-thirds.
Still not an FDA-approved therapy, but if I get diagnosed with gioblastoma brain cancer, I'm heading to Cozumel to hang out the swamps and hope to get bitten by lots of those Zika-carrying mosquitoes!
Glioblastoma Stem Cells May Be No Match for the Zika Virus
