Zika virus is a definite and direct cause of microcephaly and other brain-related birth defects, health officials from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Wednesday.
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“My hope is that now that we can be more convincing that Zika virus does cause these severe birth defects in babies, that people will focus on our prevention messages more carefully”, says Dr Sonja Rasmussen, director of the Division of Public Health Information Dissemination at the CDC.
“It is now clear that the virus causes microcephaly”, Dr. Tom Frieden, the director of the CDC, said in a statement.
He said the conclusion, reached after evaluating “mounting evidence from many studies”, signifies “an unprecedented association” in medicine, The New York Times reported.
CDC officials have been warning pregnant women to use mosquito repellent, avoid travelling to Zika-stricken regions and either abstain from sex or rely on condoms.
While mosquitos are still the primary vector for spreading Zika virus, the new report hints that we have more to learn about other modes of transmission.
“Addressing these questions will improve our ability to reduce the burden of the effects of Zika virus infection during pregnancy”, the report wrote. “We continue to be learning pretty much every day”, she said, “and most of what we’re learning is not reassuring”. In the last four months, authorities have recorded thousands of cases in Brazil in which the mosquito-borne Zika virus may have led to microcephaly in infants. It does not mean, however, that all women who have Zika virus infection during pregnancy will have babies with problems.
For example, scientists do not know why some infected women have delivered babies that appear to be healthy.
Zika has been sweeping through Latin America and the Caribbean in recent months, and the fear is that it will only get worse there and arrive in the US with the onset of mosquito season this spring and summer. However, the link between Zika virus and microcephaly has not been officially confirmed due to lack of definitive scientific proof.
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The new study, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), describes a range of brain abnormalities found in babies with microcephaly born in the Brazilian state of Pernambuco between July and December previous year. However, it’s particularly unsafe to unborn children – if a pregnant woman contracts the virus, it can significantly endanger their child. In addition, other evidence demonstrated a biological mechanism that could explain how the virus might cause microcephaly in fetuses.
