In mid-April 2016, CDC experts confirmed that Zika can cause microcephaly and other severe fetal brain defects. Microcephaly is a neurological condition where babies are born with small heads and sometimes small brains. The condition may also be associated with severe developmental issues and in rare instances death.
However, this does not mean that if you are infected with Zika during pregnancy that your baby will definitely experience health problems. It simply means that babies whose mothers are infected with Zika during pregnancy have an increased risk. Many women infected during this outbreak have delivered healthy babies.
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When a mom-to-be becomes infected with Zika virus, the virus can also infect the fetus. In Brazil, the number of cases of Zika infection and microcephalic babies spiked around the same time. Before the current outbreak, Zika infections in Brazil were extremely rare; since the outbreak, up to an estimated 1.5 million Brazilians have been infected. And between October 2015 and January 2016, more than 4,180 cases of microcephaly were reported by Brazilian health authorities; a total of only about 150 cases of microcephaly were reported annually in previous years.
Researchers are still investigating how often Zika can lead to birth defects, as well as whether moms are at higher risk during certain trimesters.
Source By : whattoexpect
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