Dr. Bill Sheridan
Analyst · Piper Jaffray. Your line is open.
It’s a great question. I think the natural history of this disease is still being explored, so there is a lot still to be learned by the medical community about Zika virus infection. I think it’s fair to say that at the moment, there can be subclinical infection, where people feel perfectly fine, and you only know that they’ve being infected with Zika virus when antibody [ph] studies. So, we know that’s the case from the studies in French Polynesia for example, with serology surveys of the population. And we also know that if mosquitoes aren’t controlled, vast majority of the population gets infected with Zika virus which spreads through the community. So, there can be some clinical infection. And if you’re not getting ill with the infection and you’re not a pregnant woman, then it’s probable that you don’t need any intervention. Then there are people who get ill with the infection, and that I’m sure that can vary from a mild flu like illness with a rash, although way up to a most severe illness with arthritis and high fevers and so on. So, I think that’s where the information is starting to be a bit thinner. And do we know that the typical case of Zika virus infection is clinically evident. We’ll have symptoms of acute arthritis and a rash, in addition to a fever. And it’s a self-limiting illness. And I don’t know whether an antiviral would be useful for those patients yet or not. In animals, so, the general course of the disease is pretty quick. In animal, the general course of the disease is pretty quick. And so, the duration of viremia that Dr. Julander shared at some of his public presentations in his model, it’s only a few days long, sort of very high tide of this virus, so lots of virus proliferation in normal animal. So, immune system kicks in and then clears the virus and creates immunity. So, the biggest medical need, there are two medical needs that still stand out. One is the issue to do with microcephaly and teratogenicity of virus infection in fetuses. And that’s going to be definitely we’re thinking about and after we’ve got the -- non-clinical safety study is done and reproductive safety study is done. The other thing that’s pretty interesting here is just the severity of the Guillain-Barré syndrome. That’s the neurological complication that is an immune complication of recovery in this virus infection. And of course, if you don’t get the virus infection at the first place, then you are not at risk. So, I don’t know, whether antiviral would be useful in preventing that, if it was administered during the virus infection, it might be but mosquito control and vaccine, as I said before, are going to be top of the agenda for the public health agencies. There may be a role for antiviral drugs that needs to be determined.