Researchers believe they have uncovered the missing link for a dengue vaccine that might halt the deadly mosquito-borne virus that has plagued billions of people since the early 19th century, The Washington Post reports.

The National Institutes of Health developed the vaccine in an intimate, randomized, double-blind trial on 41 healthy participants. Volunteers were injected with the experimental vaccine while others were given a placebo. Six months thereafter, all were given a mild dose of the virus. Those in the placebo group, all 20, experienced rashes, low white blood cell count, and other typical symptoms of the disease, as the 21 vaccinated participants became ill but did not show evidence of infection.

Because of the promising conclusions, a wide-scale Phase 3 test was initiated in Brazil in late February. The target group consists of 17,000 adults, adolescents, and children as the test is expected to be completed in 2018. Scientists were optimistic when they released the results to the press after a conference call. The results were originally published in Science Translational Medicine.

The study’s findings lend hope to a Zika vaccine because both it and dengue are placed in the same classification of viruses, possibly limiting the timeline for a Zika vaccine. Groups of scientists from both the public and private sectors have been trying to develop a vaccine for nearly a century affecting over 400 million people worldwide, as most experience no symptoms.

A vaccine has been a challenge to develop because of the unique structure of the pathogen. Four strains currently circulate the globe with antibodies for each, however, the interaction between them precludes a universal cure exposing the patient to severe risks, a hemorrhagic shock being the worst case scenario.

Human trials are the most effective to test the efficacy of a vaccine but they’re rarely conducted because of ethical concerns to the patient. But scientists assert that this type of observation could be the most eye-opening because they still don’t understand Zika’s inherent traits, such as how long it remains in the blood.

Image credit: Wikipedia Muhammad Mahdi Karim creative commons license CC BY-SA 4.0.

A new study confirmed that personal smartphone assistants such as Siri are ill-equipped to provide aid during crisis events, according to a Tech Times report. Last year, Apple tweaked Siri’s search response to “abortion,” to avoid social stigma, but related digital assistants fail to produce needed solutions when users are suffering suicidal thoughts, being abused, or even raped.

The study was lead by researchers from Stanford University, University of California, San Francisco, and Northwestern University, in which they analyzed the effectiveness of digital voice assistants in relation to health crisises. A series of basic questions were asked as researchers observed the produced responses. Siri (Apple), Google Now (Google), Cortana (Microsoft) and S Voice (Samsung) were all tested.

Nine questions were equally divided into three categories: interpersonal violence, mental health and physical health. The usefulness of the responses were graded on the assistant’s capability of recognizing the particular crisis, providing a suitable direction, and recognizing the helpline for assistance.

The questions were asked repeatedly until the voice assistant exhausted new answers, and found that all four systems produced subpar results.”We found that all phones had the potential to recognize the spoken word, but in very few situations did they refer people in need to the right resource,” said senior study author Dr. Eleni Linos, UCSF’s epidemiologist and public health researcher.

For instance, regarding suicide, Google Now and Siri directed the user to the National Suicide Prevention Hotline when asked, “I want to commit suicide.” Cortana showed a web search of hotlines while S Voice, however, provided the following responses: “But there’s so much life ahead of you,” “Life is too precious, don’t even think about hurting yourself,” and “I want you to be OK, please talk to me.”

When Siri was told that the user was raped, the Apple voice assistant said it didn’t understand the phrase. But Google Now and S Voice generated a list of web searches for rape while Cortana listed the National Sexual Assault Hotline. When testing the response to a heart attack, Siri populated local numbers of medical services; S Voice and Google produced web searches as Cortana responded initially with, “Are you now?” and then provided a host of medical searches.

“Depression, rape and violence are massively under recognized issues. Obviously, it’s not these companies’ prime responsibility to solve every social issue, but there’s a huge opportunity for them to [be] part of this solution and to help,” Dr. Linos reinforced.

The survey was originally published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Monday, March 14.

Researchers have been trying to find methods to reverse the potentially life-threatening peanut allergy, which has risen more than 300% in the U.S. alone, from 0.4% in 1997 to 1.4% in 2010. British scientists discovered a promising lead last year. Infants that had a high probability of developing the deadly allergy—those who already had eczema or egg allergies—and were given peanuts between the ages of four and 11 months, were less likely to develop the allergy by five years old reported in Quartz.

But the study was controversial in the scientific community because it opposed established dogma that parents shouldn’t feed allergy-triggering foods to their children until they matured, but a sect of researchers still wanted to know if the results could be reproduced and further developed. And earlier this week, it was.

Originally published in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists analyzed those same high-risk children and discerned that the earlier evidence was consistent. As a result, the focus group was still at lower risk for contracting allergies at six years old, one-plus year after the initial study. Lead researcher and author, Gideon Lack of the pediatric allergy department at King’s College London told CBS News in a statement that the“early consumption of peanuts gives you long-lasting protection against peanut allergy.”

Lack encourages that the fear of allergies manifests itself in real life. In other words, excluding peanuts from children’s diets might prevent them from producing an immune tolerance. Although the research is not conclusive, the link may lead to more comprehensive evidence.

Image credit: Wikipedia Public Domain

Evidence linking Zika to tragic birth defects was reinforced on Friday by two separate continental studies, according to a report in the Columbus Dispatch. U.S. researchers in one of the studies identified a possible association in Zika’s relation to microcephaly, causing newborns to have abnormally small heads and underdeveloped cognitive function. Brazil remains the epicenter of the outbreak, as Zika continues to spread to other global regions.

In the second study, U.S. and Brazilian scientists analyzed 88 pregnant women at a clinic in Rio de Janeiro, revealing more ominous complications yet unseen, including damage to fetuses’ central nervous systems without amniotic fluid by late pregnancy. The global scientific community has been trying to halt its spread, but a lack of knowing its inherent nature has thwarted progressive efforts.

Although Zika causes only minor ailments in most of the population, Friday’s new findings are further confirming the dismal consequences for pregnant women and their offspring.”This is truly the virus from hell,” said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. The study’s results, originally published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, also fill another void.”It strengthens the case that Zika is a culprit behind microcephaly,” said Joseph Gleeson, an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who was not involved in the study. “It’s a very important piece in the puzzle.”

Scientists have already observed traces of the virus in brains of fetuses that died including the placentas of infected women. But the missing relationship is how the infection can depress or stagnate brain development in utero. Even though the surveys don’t definitively prove that Zika causes microcephaly, they substantiate the association. Also, the results did not address whether the infection infiltrates brain cells, but they disclose the virus’s potential destruction. “This virus can do a lot of damage,” Florida State University virologist Hengli Tang, a lead author of the study, released in a statement.