The malady causes babies to be born with abnormally small heads and brain problems. However, no abnormalities were found in the fetuses of women without Zika infections, the study noted.
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Researchers in Brazil evaluated 88 women who visited a clinic in Rio de Janeiro, 72 of whom had tested positive positive for Zika. At least twelve cases in the United States have now been confirmed by the CDC.
The virus has infected people across 282 Colombian municipalities, 67 percent of them women.
As of Thursday, 47 travel-related cases of the Zika virus are now in Florida, and three of those cases are in Orange County, according to the Florida Department of Health. It strengthens the case that Zika is a culprit behind microcephaly”, said Joseph Gleeson, an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, who was not involved in the study. Some cases were reported back in the 1950s.
“Mosquito-borne transmission of Zika is really the most common way the virus spreads”, said Dr. Jennifer McQuiston, CDC spokesperson. The Zika virus lives longer in semen than in blood.
To date in Brazil, the country most affected by the epidemic, 583 cases of microcephaly were confirmed in October 2015, four times the historical annual average. They included calcification of the brain, placental insufficiency with low to no amniotic fluid, fetal growth restriction and central nervous system damage, including potential blindness.
“Now you can be studying the virus in the right cell type, screening your drugs on the right cell type and studying the biology of the right cell type”.
The study in Cell Stem Cell showed that Zika infects a kind of neural stem cell that gives rise to the cerebral cortex, the brain’s outer layer responsible for intellectual capabilities and higher mental functions.
The Zika virus may infect and kill a type of brain cell that is crucial for brain development, according to a new study done in human cells growing in lab dishes.
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Results of the experiments, conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Florida State University, and Emory University, are described online March 4 in the journal Cell Stem Cell. “And that’s the reason we’ve asked the Emergency Committee again next week to convene and look at these data”, the WHO’s Aylward said, referring to a group of independent experts chaired by David Heymann.
