Current Concepts in Zika Research

Abstract

Before 2013, yellow fever and dengue were the main arboviruses of concern in the Latin American region. However, after December of that year, chikungunya arrived in the region, and a couple of years later Zika virus (ZIKV) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. Zika is another virus transmitted by vectors (arboviruses) affecting not only people living in the tropics, but also travelers and migrating populations [17][18][19][20]. Zika has impacted significantly on the health of the Americas, especially in Central and South America, due to the large number of cases of Guillain-Barré Syndrome that have been reported in the association, as well, especially due to microcephaly and the Congenital Zika Syndrome, which was the reason for it to be declared on February 2016 as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization (WHO) [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16].Keeping these issues in mind, this book includes different topics regarding research and clinical topics related to Zika virus research in the last five years in the Americas as well as in the World. This book has been organized in three major sections: Epidemiology; Clinical Aspects; and Zika and Guillain-Barré Syndrome.Commissioning of this book by IntechOpen editorial has been related in part to my long commitment to vector-borne, zoonotic, and neglected tropical diseases, being involved as Co-Chair of the Working Group on Zoonoses of the International Society for Chemotherapy (WGZ-ISC), as well as in Colombia at the Committee on Tropical Medicine, Zoonoses and Travel Medicine of the Colombian Association of Infectious Diseases (Asociación Colombiana de Infectología, ACIN) and more recently important, as the Chair of the Colombian Collaborative Network of Research on Zika (Red Colombiana de Colaboración en Zika) (RECOLZIKA), since January 2016. RECOLZIKA has contributed to multiple aspects of the research on Zika in Colombia and other countries in Latin America, including about the Congenital Zika Syndrome as well as on the Guillain-Barré, among other clinical consequences of this arboviral disease (more than 50 papers in journals indexed on Scopus, Web of Sciences and PubMed, among other databases).