Mosquitos are part of Florida and while there is no treatment and no vaccine, prevention is the key in controlling the virus.
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Among the states most likely to be affected by the virus are states like Texas, Louisiana, and MS, where teen pregnancy rates are the highest in the country.
Another question the study can not answer: what proportion of women infected with Zika will go on to have babies with birth defects. On September 12, the Louisiana Department of Health (DOH) announced that there have 10 new cases of West Nile confirmed in the state since the last report was issued in collaboration with the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in mid-August. But outside researchers said this type of research, known as a case-control study, is more likely to avoid the biases that can affect other types of studies. An instrument that measures colors is then used to confirm the presence of the virus, said Randall Kincaid, the senior scientific officer at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Zika is nonpartisan, and I have been very clear that something had to get done this week”. “Now they have essentially found the gun in the defendant’s glove compartment”.
Researchers studied 32 babies born with microcephaly between January and May in hospitals in Recife, a Brazilian city in the region hardest hit by the microcephaly epidemic. The mothers in both groups had similar characteristics. Babies born with microcephaly have exhibited symptoms of eye infection, including lesions in the eye, but it was unclear if the development of microcephaly or the Zika virus itself led to the lesions. “‘However, many questions still remain to be answered – including the role of previous dengue infection”…”
Researchers have established a link between Zika and fetal microcephaly.
Samples were tested for Zika virus and Zika virus antibodies. Arthur was born with microcephaly. “Aggressive mosquito control efforts” were taking place in the expanded area, which has experienced 35 non-travel related Zika cases. That package has been bogged down in partisan wrangling since before Congress went on its summer break in July.
But still there is a lot that health officials don’t know about the virus.
In a September 8 article, Salon’s Daniel Denvir wrote that despite right-wing media’s insistence otherwise, “It is Republicans who have made Zika funding the latest hostage to their crusade to defund Planned Parenthood”.
There’s no doubt among experts that Zika causes microcephaly, other types of brain damage and other birth defects.
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Today, researchers from Brazil and the United Kingdom report the preliminary findings of the first case-control study examining the association between microcephaly and in utero Zika virus infection.
