Etymologia: Zika Virus

1. Dick GW, Kitchen SF, Haddow AJ. Zika virus. I. Isolations and serological specificity. Trans R Soc Trop Med Hyg. 1952;46:509–20. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ 00359203(52)90042-4 2. Hayes EB. Zika virus outside Africa. Emerg Infect Dis. 2009; 15:1347–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.3201/eid1509.090442 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;48:139–45. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1016/0035-9203(54)90006-1 4. Murphy JD. Luganda–English dictionary. Washington (DC): The Catholic University of America Press; 1972. Z 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. Zika Virus