Severe defects in babies complicate Zika study

New York/Brasilia, Feb 8

Experts on microcephaly, the birth defect that has sparked alarm in the current Zika virus outbreak, say they are struck by the severity of a small number of cases they have reviewed from Brazil.

Consultations among doctors in Brazil and the US have increased in the past two weeks, and some of the leading authorities on the condition are finding patterns of unusual devastation in scans of the newborns' malformed brains.

While it's not known how representative the scans are, the early observations of these doctors point to a tough road ahead.

"We are in the process of very rapid information gathering on what has been seen," said Dr William Dobyns, a geneticist at Seattle Children's Hospital. "The condition that I've been able to review is more severe than simple microcephaly."

The Zika virus is transmitted by mosquito, causing mild symptoms in about 20 per cent of cases, and most people  experience no illness at all. But a spike in reported microcephaly cases among babies in areas of Brazil with Zika outbreaks has triggered an international effort to determine whether the virus causes the condition.

Dobyns has spent 30 years researching and treating microcephaly, a condition defined by abnormally small heads in newborns. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sought his expertise in understanding the epidemic.

With a small group of geneticists and other microcephaly specialists, he recently reviewed scans of a handful of babies sent by a colleague in Brazil. All experts were struck by the scale of malformations, he said. "These children have a very severe form of microcephaly," Dobyns said. "The brain is not just small, it's small with malformations of the cerebral cortex and calcifications. It has the appearance of a very severe, destructive injury to the brain." — Reuters