From Healio
March 28, 2018
Neurologic and ocular birth defects occur in 7% of offspring of mothers located in French territories of the Americas who have lab-confirmed Zika virus infection, according to research published in The New England Journal of Medicine.
Additionally, defects were most likely to occur if the mother was infected with Zika in the first trimester of pregnancy.
“It has been recognized recently that Zika virus infection (ZIKV) during pregnancy can cause severe birth defects, including microcephaly, other brain defects and congenital Zika syndrome,” Bruno Hoen, MD, PhD, from the INSERM Centre d’Investigation Clinique 1424, and colleagues wrote. “However, the magnitude of this risk is not clearly defined. It was estimated to be higher than 40% in a prospective observational study in Brazil involving women who had symptomatic ZIKV infection during pregnancy.”