Zika hazard

More than 50 people in the United States have returned from travels to Latin America with an unwelcome souvenir: the Zika virus. The World Health Organization declared the virus a public health emergency in February, and it has now spread to 31 countries and territories. Both medically and politically, Zika has quickly proven to be a serious danger to unborn children.

In most cases Zika is spread by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, an aggressive species that bites by day or night and is found in tropical and subtropical regions and in the southern United States. But the first locally acquired Zika infection in the United States, confirmed in Dallas on Feb. 2, was sexually transmitted by a traveler who had just come from Venezuela.

Four out of 5 people infected with Zika experience none of the mild symptoms, such as fever, rash, joint pain, or eye inflammation. But the frightening aspect of the virus is that infected pregnant women can pass it on to their unborn babies, and it is potentially linked to some cases of microcephaly, a condition in which newborns have an abnormally small head and associated brain damage.

Scientists have not yet proven the virus causes the birth defect, but there has been a marked upswing in microcephaly cases among newborns in regions where cases of Zika have skyrocketed, especially Brazil. There is no treatment for Zika, and scientists are scrambling to develop a vaccine.

Compounding the tragedy, activists are using the crisis as an opportunity to push abortion: Some have called for Columbia, El Salvador, and Brazil to lift their existing abortion restrictions. Since microcephaly is difficult to detect in utero, activists want abortion to be legal for any pregnant woman who has been diagnosed with Zika.

Protons vs. cancer

In 2014 police briefly arrested Ashya King’s parents after they whisked him out of a hospital in Southampton, England, and took him to Spain for treatment of a malignant brain tumor using proton beam therapy. Doctors in England would not consent to proton therapy for the boy, then 5 years old, because the therapy was not yet approved in the United Kingdom to treat Ashya’s type of brain cancer.

Now, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have found evidence that backs up the King family. In a study of 59 children and young adults with brain cancer, published online in Lancet Oncology in January, the researchers found that proton beam therapy was as effective as traditional radiation treatment, but with many fewer side effects. Unlike radiation, proton therapy does not destroy healthy brain tissue along with cancer cells.

As for Ashya, he did eventually receive proton treatment, and last year doctors declared him cancer-free. —J.B.

Practicing improvement

Johns Hopkins researchers have found that slightly modifying practice sessions can help people master new skills more quickly.

In an experiment, the researchers asked subjects to move a computer cursor in a set pattern as quickly and accurately as possible by squeezing a pressure-sensitive controller. All participants practiced the test several times, but for some participants, researchers altered the amount of pressure needed to operate the controller with each practice session.

Gains in performance nearly doubled among the subjects who used the altered practice sessions compared with those who repeated the task the same way each time. The findings, published online Jan. 28 in Current Biology, could help patients with neurological injuries to regain lost motor function. —J.B.