Congratulations to Derek Cummings for co-authoring two major papers in Science, one on Zika and the other on Dengue. Together with colleagues from Johns Hopkins, Institut Pasteur, Imperial College, Princeton and UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, Biology Professor Derek Cummings co-authored an important review “Assessing the global threat from zika virus” (Science 12 August 2016). The review addresses such important issues as the transmission, natural history and phylogenetics of the zika virus and its potential range. The second paper addresses the effects of a recently developed vaccine for dengue which, like zika, is caused by a flavivirus that is transmitted by a mosquito vector. Cummings and his colleagues from Imperial College, Johns Hopkins and UF-EPI present the first independent predictions on the potential impact of dengue vaccination programs (Science 2 Sep 2016). They argue that the vaccine will be most effective in areas where most people have already been exposed to dengue at the time of vaccination. If individuals not previously exposed to the virus are vaccinated they are at an increased risk of severe disease when they are subsequently exposed to dengue.
