US and Brazil disease detectives hunt Zika virus-microcephaly connection in Brazil

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FEB 24 2016, 10:52 AM ET

U.S., Brazilian Health Teams Hit Slums to Study Zika

by ASSOCIATED PRESS

Teams of U.S. and Brazilian health workers ventured into dicey slums, fought through snarled traffic and braved torrential downpours on the first day of their effort to determine if the Zika virus is causing a birth defect affecting the brain.

The eight teams, each made up of one "disease detective" from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and three Brazilian health workers, went to work Tuesday in Paraiba, the impoverished state in northeastern Brazil that is one of the epicenters of the country's tandem outbreaks of Zika and microcephaly.

Their goal is to persuade about 100 mothers of infants recently born with the defect as well to enroll in the study. They also need participation as controls of two to three times as many mothers from the same areas who delivered babies without microcephaly at about the same time.

The study aims to determine if the Brazilian government is right that Zika can cause microcephaly, or whether the mosquito-borne virus is not in fact to blame or is only partially responsible, as a growing chorus of doctors in Brazil and beyond have begun to suggest.
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http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/zi...ian-health-teams-hit-slums-study-zika-n524911

 

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Disease detectives hunt Zika virus-microcephaly connection in Brazil

Elizabeth Cohen-Profile-Image
By Elizabeth Cohen, Senior Medical Correspondent
Updated 7:48 AM ET, Wed February 24, 2016


(CNN)In her career as a pediatrician, Dr. Erin Staples has seen only the occasional case of microcephaly, the birth defect where babies are born with small heads and underdeveloped brains.

Then, last Thursday, at a hospital in Brazil, she saw three babies with the devastating defect all in one waiting room.

"It was sobering," said Staples.

Staples is an expert in infectious diseases and she's in Brazil, a country hit hard by the Zika virus, to lead the first large-scale investigation into the link between Zika and microcephaly.
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For a variety of reasons -- for instance, the United States has more air conditioning and people tend to live in less crowded conditions -- it's expected that the virus will spread much more slowly in the United States than in many Latin American countries.

Even so, experts expect at least some babies could be born in the United States with microcephaly because of Zika.

That gives public health authorities a few months to figure out what can be done to protect unborn babies in the United States -- and that's where the investigation currently underway in Brazil comes in.

Over the next few weeks, the 16-member CDC team, along with Brazilian health officials, will go door to door in Paraiba, a state that has seen a large outbreak of Zika.
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http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/24/health/zika-microcephaly-brazil-investigation/