Zika virus may be transmitted through saliva, urine

Obstetricians have said that since 80 percent of those infected by the virus show no symptoms, many women have no way of knowing early enough to make an informed choice about their unborn child.

Jesse Alves, a specialist at the Emilio Ribas Institute of Infectious Diseases, a government hospital in Sao Paulo, Brazil, said the relevance of the findings is unclear. The CDC still is reviewing data on whether the virus can be transmitted through saliva and urine and is not making a recommendation related to those fluids at this time, according to Dr. Frieden. Guidance for pediatricians treating infants whose mothers may have been infected with Zika virus has not changed.

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) for their part urged people to use condoms or abstain from having sex if they live in or have traveled to Zika-infected areas. After confirming a sexually transmitted case of Zika virus in Dallas County, Texas, the CDC released guidelines calling for men who have traveled to affected areas to use condoms during sex with a pregnant partner or abstain from sex for the duration of the pregnancy.

The discovery opens “new paradigms for understanding the transmission routes of the Zika virus”, she said. “Presence of virus in saliva doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily transmissible that way”.

The updated guidelines also address women who are not pregnant and have a sexual partner who lives in or has traveled to an area affected by Zika. The third is a single report of virus isolated from semen at least two weeks and possibly up to 10 weeks after illness began.

USA officials have recommended pregnant women postpone trips to more than two dozen countries with Zika outbreaks, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“We have taken a cautious approach”, he said.

The World Heath Organization has issued a global public health emergency over Zika and its suspected link to complications in newborns but has not scientifically confirmed a definite connection between Zika and microcephaly.

These warnings follow the revelation that the mosquito-borne virus may cause microcephaly, a congenital condition which leads to abnormal brain development. The patient later died from his gunshot wounds and not the Zika infection, health officials and Carvalho said.

The ministry did not answer multiple requests on Friday for more details on the sample sharing.

The virus has created alarm since being linked in Brazil to a surge in cases of babies born with abnormally small heads to women who became infected with Zika while pregnant.

Keaten reported from Geneva.