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Volume 20, Number 6—June 2014
Etymologia

Etymologia: Zika Virus

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Zika [zēkʹə] Virus

Zika virus is a mosquito-borne positive-sense, single-stranded RNA virus in the family Flaviviridae, genus Flavivirus that causes a mild, acute febrile illness similar to dengue. In 1947, scientists researching yellow fever placed a rhesus macaque in a cage in the Zika Forest (zika meaning “overgrown” in the Luganda language), near the East African Virus Research Institute in Entebbe, Uganda. A fever developed in the monkey, and researchers isolated from its serum a transmissible agent that was first described as Zika virus in 1952. It was subsequently isolated from a human in Nigeria in 1954. From its discovery until 2007, confirmed cases of Zika virus infection from Africa and Southeast Asia were rare. In 2007, however, a major epidemic occurred in Yap Island, Micronesia. More recently, epidemics have occurred in Polynesia, Easter Island, the Cook Islands and New Caledonia.

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References

  1. Dick  GW, Kitchen  SF, Haddow  AJ. Zika virus. I. Isolations and serological specificity. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg. 1952;46:50920 . DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  2. Hayes  EB. Zika virus outside Africa. Emerg Infect Dis. 2009;15:134750. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  3. MacNamara  FN. Zika virus: a report on three cases of human infection during an epidemic of jaundice in Nigeria. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg. 1954;48:13945. DOIPubMedGoogle Scholar
  4. Murphy  JD. Luganda–English dictionary. Washington (DC): The Catholic University of America Press; 1972.

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Cite This Article

DOI: 10.3201/eid2006.et2006

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Page created: May 19, 2014
Page updated: May 19, 2014
Page reviewed: May 19, 2014
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