A big achievement - EMI 2016 Impact Factor reached 5.605*

During the past month, an outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) in South Korea resulted in 175 confirmed cases of MERS, including 27 related deaths. One of the MERS patients in South Korea traveled to China, raising a concern that this MERS outbreak may spread to other countries in Asia. On June 2, 2015, Jiang and colleagues from Fudan University in China, who have studied the peptide- and antibody-based therapeutics for MERS since 2012 when the first MERS case was reported inSaudi Arabia, submitted a Letter to the Editor to Emerging Microbes& Infections (EMI) calling for “Urgent development of effective therapeutic and prophylactic agents to control the emerging threat of Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS)”. After reading the manuscript, the editor-in-chief immediately sent it out for review and asked the reviewers to return their comments as soon as possible. On June 4, 2015, the authors revised their manuscript according to the reviewers’ critiques and suggestions and submitted the revised manuscript immediately. On June 9, 2015, this article was accepted for publication in EMI.

Lalita Priyamvada^1,2, William Hudson^2,3, Rafi Ahmed^2,3 and Jens Wrammert^1,2

1. Department of Pediatrics, Division of Infectious Disease, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA
2. Emory Vaccine Center, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA
3. Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA 30322, USA

Correspondence: J Wrammert, E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Received 18 February 2017; Revised 3 April 2017; Accepted 17 April 2017

ABSTRACT

Zika virus (ZIKV) is a re-emerging mosquito-borne flavivirus that has recently caused extensive outbreaks in Central and South America and the Caribbean. Given its association with Guillain-Barr Syndrome in adults and neurological and ocular malformities in neonates, ZIKV has become a pathogen of significant public health concern worldwide. ZIKV shares a considerable degree of genetic identity and structural homology with other flaviviruses, including dengue virus (DENV).