“Now, the poor guy – you’ve got to see this guy”, Trump said while jerking his arms in front of his body at a rally in SC in November.
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The condition causes joint deformities at birth, particularly in the arms and legs.
Shortly before Trump made the remarks about the “poor guy”, he had been talking about an article written by New York Times investigative reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has the condition. Most people with the condition don’t have any genetic markers for it, but some do. Because of this, researchers hypothesized that the babies’ arthrogryposis were likely from a neurological basis. However, this new study is the most detailed look at Zika-related joint deformities.
The Zika outbreak was first detected a year ago in Brazil, where it has been linked to more than 1,700 cases of microcephaly, a birth defect marked by small head size that can lead to severe developmental problems in babies. Possibly thousands of babies have been born with microcephaly due to Zika.
Recently, scientists discovered that Zika can trigger a rare condition called Guillian-Barre syndrome – a rare discorder in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves – in adults.
The research, published today in the BMJ, comes from a team based in the Brazilian city of Recife, which is at the center of the outbreak.
This is only an observational study and no firm conclusions can be drawn about the effect of the Zika virus on arthrogryposis. No evidence of joint abnormalities was found, van der Linden said. The name of this condition literally means “crooked joints” in Greek.
Six of the children had been diagnosed with microcephaly, while all showed brain imaging results consistent with congenital Zika infection, including abnormal brain development, reduced brain volume and a build-up of calcium in certain regions of the brain.
The researchers suspect the Zika virus attacks brain nerve centres supplying the muscles around the joints, rather than the joints themselves, and scans of the babies’ brains appear to support this idea., reported the BBC. Researchers suggest that all babies affected by Zika virus infection inside the womb should be followed and evaluated for bone and muscle problems.
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“As opposed to linking Zika just to microcephaly there is a whole spectrum which they are now referring to as the [congenital] Zika syndrome, within which is included microcephaly but it is not limited to microcephaly”, said Anthony Fauci, director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and not part of the study, told the Guardian.
