Delayed Zika effects seen in babies at birth

INFANTS in Colombia who were exposed to the Zika virus in the womb showed motor and cognitive development delays in their first 18 months of life, despite having a normal head circumference at birth, scientists reported Monday.

Their study, published in the journal JAMA Pediatrics, involved 70 babies born on Colombia’s Caribbean coast between August 2016 and November 2017, the height of an epidemic that spread across South America and led the World Health Organization to declare a global emergency.

The Zika virus is spread by mosquitoes, and can cause pregnant mothers to give birth to babies with a pattern of defects and disabilities called “congenital Zika syndrome.” These include severe microcephaly, decreased brain tissue, damage to the eyes, clubfoot and restricted motion.

But some 90-95 percent of babies whose mothers carried the Zika virus during pregnancy are born without any defects, and the impact on their brain development had remained largely unknown.

“This is the group of babies that I think no one was very worried about,” Sarah Mulkey, a fetal and neonatal neurologist at Children’s National Hospital in Washington and the study’s first author, told AFP.

“Now we’re finding that these normal appearing babies are having a difference in their developmental trajectory over time,” as measured by the time it took them to hit markers like crawling, walking, or playing peekaboo.

THIS handout photo from the Australian Department of Defence shows a fire in the distance seen from the Royal Australian Navy’s HMAS Adelaide ship off the coast in Eden in New South Wales, as part of bushfire relief operations. Firefighters raced to quell massive bushfires in southeastern Australia taking advantage of a brief drop in temperatures and some much-needed rainfall before another heatwave strikes later this week. AFP PHOTO