Babies infected with Zika virus may suffer severe brain damage even if they do not display the signature symptom of an unusually small head, a study in<\/p>\n
monkeys suggested Monday.<\/p>\n
This meant that brain-damaged children may be walking around undiagnosed and missing out on life-bettering therapy, scientists reported in the science journal<\/p>\n
Nature Medicine. “Current criteria using head size to diagnose Zika-related brain injury fail to capture more subtle brain damage that can lead to significant<\/p>\n
learning problems and mental health disorders later in life,” said the study’s lead author Kristina Waldorf of the University of Washington School of Medicine in<\/p>\n
Seattle. We are diagnosing only the tip of the iceberg,” she said in a statement. Waldorf and a team analysed the brains of five growing macaque foetuses<\/p>\n
whose mothers they infected with Zika virus.<\/p>\n
Macaques are considered a close animal model for human pregnancy. Only one of the monkey foetuses displayed physical abnormalities early on, but later<\/p>\n
MRI scans revealed that the brains of four of the five were not developing as they should. Particularly hard hit were regions of the brain where new brain cells<\/p>\n
are generated. “Subtle damage caused by this virus during foetal development or childhood may not be apparent for years, but may cause neurocognitive<\/p>\n
delays in learning and increase the risk of developing neurological disorders such as schizophrenia and early dementia,” said Waldorf’s colleague and study co<\/p>\n
-author, Lakshmi Rajagopal.<\/p>\n
“These findings further emphasise the urgency for an effective vaccine to prevent Zika virus infection.” Since Zika erupted on a large scale in mid-2015, more<\/p>\n
than 1.5 million people have been infected with the virus, mostly in Brazil and other countries in South America.<\/p>\n
In most people, it causes no symptoms, or light ones such as an itchy rash. But it is very dangerous for foetuses — more than 2,200 babies have been born with<\/p>\n
Zika-related microcephaly, a shrinking of the brain and skull, according to the World Health Organization. Many others died before birth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Babies infected with Zika virus may suffer severe brain damage even if they do not display the signature symptom of an unusually small head, a study in monkeys suggested Monday. This meant that brain-damaged children may be walking around undiagnosed and missing out on life-bettering therapy, scientists reported in the science journal Nature Medicine. “Current […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21111,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21112,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21110\/revisions\/21112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}