To address the potential for WNV transmission through transplants and transfusions, FDA collaborated with industry and blood banks to develop new donor screening tests, which were in use by summer 2003 under an FDA-approved research protocol. Symptomatic infections may include headache, rash, conjunctivitis, joint and muscle pain and fever, and are often mistaken for the common cold however, they may evolve into serious, fatal diseases. Transfusion-transmitted (TT) WNV, DENV and ZIKV have been reported, and TT-CHIKV is suspected to have occurred. These viruses frequently cause asymptomatic (silent) infections, during which affected individuals feel well enough to donate blood. Infected travelers and inadvertent importation of infected mosquitoes pose a risk, since the transmitting vectors (Aedes mosquitoes) are present in the contiguous U.S. ZIKV, CHIKV and DENV are not yet established in the U.S., although small outbreaks have been caused by DENV in Hawaii, Texas and New York, both DENV and CHIKV in Florida, and all three have affected U.S. No effective therapies or FDA-licensed vaccines exist for these human infections. The first CHIKV outbreak in the Americas began in late 2013 in the Caribbean and quickly spread to South, Central and North American countries, causing >2 million cases by mid-2016. DENV causes 50-100 million cases of disease and tens of thousands of deaths annually worldwide. have caused illness in tens of thousands of people, including ~20,000 cases of neurological disease, and >1,800 deaths through 2015. ZIKV has caused large outbreaks in the Pacific region and the Americas since 2013, causes the Guillain-Barre syndrome and, when infecting pregnant women, birth defects such as microcephaly. This work is important because these viruses together have a substantial public health impact. The mission of our research program is to reduce the risk of transmission of West Nile Virus (WNV), dengue virus (DENV), chikungunya virus (CHIKV), and the newly recognized threat Zika virus (ZIKV), through donated blood.
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