Lab mice with brain tumors felt better when they were injected with the Zika virus.
Information has appeared more than once that some deadly virus, which has claimed and continues to claim a huge number of human lives, can suddenly somehow magically heal a person from other serious diseases.
This time, Brazilian scientists have found that the Zika virus is capable of shrinking brain tumors. The scientists came to this conclusion as part of an experiment when laboratory mice with the last stage of a brain tumor were injected with a certain dose of the Zika virus. To the surprise of the researchers, the virus began to infect unhealthy people first. And tumor cells, leading to shrinkage of tumors and increased survival in mice.
If you are interested in this study, then it is detailed in the journal Cancer Research in the April 26, 2018 issue. The findings are encouraging for scientists that in vivo the Zika virus can be used as a tool to treat aggressive human tumors of the central nervous system (CNS).
After injecting small amounts of the pathogen into the brains of mice with advanced disease, the researchers observed a significant reduction in tumor mass. And in some cases, the tumor was completely destroyed, even where the disease metastasized to the spinal cord.