NeuroZika: The history of how the mosquito helped to reduce the scientific gap in a developing country

Yes! The mosquito did it again. Since the beginning of the current Zika virus outbreak in 2016, 3-4 million adults have been infected, a subset of which has suffered severe neurological complications. This raised multiple questions about how arboviruses, a traditional cause of mosquito-borne infection, may impact both the human brain structure and functional organization. The Dominican Republic, endemic for mosquitoborne diseases, was one of the most affected countries. With the support of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, our lab was able to develop a collaboration with the Dominican Republic that allowed us to conduct the first case-control neuroimaging study in an adults suffering from Zika virus with severe neurological manifestations. Beyond the informative value of this study for the clinical and scientific community, this project fostered a collaborative environment that have allowed multiple Dominican health professionals to be trained and exposed to the high level research conducted at UIUC, therefore expanding the horizons of the science and reducing the unfortunate gap between developed and developing countries. This is the history of how the mosquito contributed to wake up the scientific spirit of this, otherwise dormant, Caribbean paradise.Ope