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One of the most dreaded diseases in India is Cancer and its various varieties. As on day there are a variety of treatments available to treat cancer through surgeries and therapies. But, we are yet to find a treatment that guarantees uprooting cancer from its root and even vaccines to avoid it altogether. Here’s some update on zika virus and its association with brain cancer.
Most of us are aware of the havoc that Zika virus has been creating since its outbreak in the south african countries. But, we are less known of some new updates on the same. Researchers apparently have found out its usage in brain cancer treatment beyond its significant threat to the unborn children.
Though untested in humans yet, the results after testing on lab dishes and animals do reveal that could help treat brain cancer. Its already known that in infants and fetus, the zika targets the brain stem cells which are found in abundance in their brain cells and kills them. This usually increases the chances of neurological issues in new borns infected with zika. But, zika is not able to target adult brains with the same effectiveness. Comparatively, the effect is less severe plus these viruses have the ability to target and kill the lethal glioblastomas, stem cells which are lethal and are not affected by chemotherapy or radiation therapy and trigger the cancer again post treatment.
This research had further created rays of hope in treating brain cancer but requires further studies and tests to be carried out on animals before trying out on humankind. The reason mainly revolves around safety issues related to zika virus. Presently, there are research groups that are also testing other virus like polio, herpes and more in order to target glioblastomas. The use of zika virus as a brain cancer healer aide might require quite some time and a lot of further testing before it hits the cancer hospitals across the world.
