Brazil Zika outbreak: New test kits for mosquito-borne viruses

The first case of brain damage linked to the Zika virus within the United States has been reported in Hawaii.

The mother became ill with the Zika virus while living in Brazil in May 2015 and the baby was likely infected in the womb, Hawaiian state health officials and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. The CDC in particular cautioned pregnant women not to travel to those areas as Zika has been linked to serious birth defects.

But in pregnant women, the virus can spread to the fetus and cause brain shrinkage – a rare condition called microcephaly that severely limits a child’s intellectual and physical development – or death. The disease turned up in Brazil in May 2015 and has spread quickly. Brazil has been experiencing a huge Zika virus infection that began last May, and has seen a startling increase in infants born with microcephaly.

A baby born in Hawaii with a birth defect that affects head size had also been infected with Zika virus, state health officials said Saturday.

In response to the news, the CDC issued a travel advisory warning pregnant women to avoid travel to nations with growing numbers of Zika infections – including Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, French Guiana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Martinique, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Suriname, Venezuela, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. In December, Puerto Rico reported its first confirmed case in someone who had not recently traveled, meaning they caught it from a mosquito on the island.

Because no vaccine exists to prevent the disease, all travelers are warned to take aggressive steps to prevent mosquito bites.

While the link between Zika infection in pregnancy and babies born with microcephaly has not yet been proven, mounting evidence supports the theory that there is a connection.

“We are saddened by the events that have affected this mother and her newborn”, DOH State Epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Park said in the release.

In the Hawaii case, a doctor recognised the possibility of a Zika infection in the newborn baby and alerted state officials, the health department said.

How the virus damages fetal brains is not yet known.

The same species of mosquitoes that spread the chikungunya and dengue viruses, the Aedes species, also spreads the Zika virus. Adult female mosquitoes pick them up by biting one infected human, and then, some days later, after the virus has traveled from their gut to their salivary glands, they infect another human.

Symptoms generally include a fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis, or “pink eye.” Park said neither the mother nor the baby in Hawaii is still infectious.

“I think the bottom line is, yes, local transmission can occur, particularly in the areas of the southern United States where vector mosquitoes are present”.