Fears that Zika could be linked to stillbirth

Doctors fear that the Zika virus could possibly pose a greater threat to unborn babies than previously thought, after tests on a stillborn girl in Brazil confirmed that she had the infection.

The virus, which has swept through the Americas, has already been linked to microcephaly, a condition that leaves children with small skulls, but not to more widespread abnormalities.  The mother of this child was referred to doctors after an ultrasound scan at 18 weeks found that her baby had stopped growing normally. Follow-up examinations in her second and third trimesters revealed the full extent of the baby’s defects. She was delivered weighing only 2lbs.

Albert Ko, an epidemiologist at Yale University and leader of the investigating team, said the case served as “an alert to clinicians”.

“These findings raise concerns that the virus may cause severe damage to foetuses leading to stillbirths and may be associated with effects other than those seen in the central nervous system”.

Further work will be needed to understand whether the stillbirth was an isolated case, and whether the virus can cause the accumulation of fluids that led to such severe swelling in the child.

The alert comes a month after senior doctors warned that the Zika virus could pose a major threat to public health. Speaking ahead of an emergency meeting of the World Health Organisation, convened to decide whether the outbreak should be rated as a global health crisis, Jeremy Farrar, head of the Wellcome Trust, said: “It is a silent infection in a group of highly vulnerable individuals – pregnant women – that is associated with a horrible outcome for their babies.”

For more on this story see the Guardian article here

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