A worrying new study indicates that we may be only scratching the surface with regards to the negative effects of the sudden Zika virus outbreak.
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“There seems to be a whole spectrum of conditions that are related to this – not only microcephaly”, says Karin Nielsen-Saines, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA who led the study. “It seems like it can act on multiple fronts”.
Colombia has reported the largest number of cases in Latin America after Brazil, where the outbreak was first detected past year and where 1.5 million Zika cases have been reported. This could lead to death of the fetus, or to the underdevelopment of the brain.
Now a chilling new study, conducted by both American and Brazilian researchers, is driving home that warning.
The team studied 88 pregnant women who went to a clinic at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation in Rio de Janeiro with the intention of being tested for the virus. Tests showed 72 were actively infected with the virus. The non-infected women all had normal ultrasounds. But the missing relationship is how the infection can depress or stagnate brain development in utero. Another had to be delivered via C-section, because the mother’s uterus had no amniotic fluid. “Stillbirth has many, many different causes, including maternal age, genetic factors”, she said.
Scientists looked at three brain cell types, and found that 90 percent of human neural progenitor cells (hNPCs) were infected within three days – with many of them already dead within that time. The study has appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine.
The Centers for Disease Control says it has confirmed that a Missouri man who had traveled to Haiti was infected with the Zika virus.
Laos joins 40 other countries to record local transmission of the mosquito borne virus since January 2015.
The other two types of cells exposed to Zika in this experiment are stem cells and neurons.
Rodriguez-Morales said researchers have sent the samples to the institute. But “it certainly adds weight to the argument”, he said.
“It does not directly give the proof that this is exactly what the Zika virus is doing in the fetus”.
In this photo taken on Monday, Feb. 29, 2016, provided by Florida State University, Hengli Tang poses in his lab at Florida State University, in Tallahassee, Fla.
Worldwide health officials are examining the connection between pregnant women getting the virus and a birth defect called microcephaly in their newborn infants.
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Prof Tang said: “It’s significant because we’re literally the first people in the world to know this, to know that this virus can infect these very important cells and interfere with their function”.
