According to the findings of a small study, it was found out that foetuses of pregnant women infected with the mosquito-borne Zika virus had a variety of severe birth abnormalities pointing to stronger association between the Zika virus and microcephaly.
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Nature reported that the Colombian Collaborative Network on Zika (Recolzika), a group of researchers studying the virus, expects a rise in cases of Zika-linked birth defects starting in two or three months and that researchers are investigating several other suspected cases of Zika-linked microcephaly.
There is still no direct confirmation Zika virus, spread by infected mosquitoes, is to blame more than 5,600 Brazilian babies born with abnormally small heads.
And one study has reported that the virus can infect and kill a cell type crucial to developing brains (SN Online: 3/4/16).
Though the Zika virus was discovered in 1947, there is very little known about how it works and its potential health implications, especially among pregnant women.
“We saw problems with the fetus or the pregnancy at eight weeks, 22 weeks, 25 weeks, and we saw problems at 35 weeks”, said Dr. Karin Nielsen, professor of clinical pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los Angeles, who helped organize the study.
Colombia, seen as a key test case of the impact of the virus, has 42,706 cases of Zika, including 7653 pregnant women.
“This study is just the beginning, and many more studies are needed to understand the relationship between Zika and microcephaly”, said Amelia Pinto, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Saint Louis University.
The link between Zika and microcephaly remains largely circumstantial. Latin America and the Caribbean have been hit with Zika outbreaks in the previous year. He added that even if there is not a ideal link between the defects and Zika, the results add weight to the hypothesis and serve as “additional evidence suggesting an association between Zika virus and negative obstetrical outcomes, including birth defects and fetal demise”. The Department of Public Health has noted that Mika is now not a threat in the United States, as no cases have involved patients being infected within the country. The study was published on Friday in the journal Cell Stem Cell. “We believe because it’s the same vector, that this would be the high season obviously for Zika transmission as well”, Aylward said. More than 80 percent of the women with symptoms such as fever and rash tested positive for Zika in the blood, urine or both.
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Other countries with Zika also are reporting a steep increase in cases of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder that can cause paralysis.
