CDC follows up on Zika-exposed babies
Agency says 1 in 7 has nervous system issues, birth defects.
The first look at how children exposed to Zika virus in the womb are faring at age 1 and older is out, and the report is sobering.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study out Tuesday found that about 1 in 7 babies exposed to Zika during pregnancy appears to have significant, ongoing health issues.
The data analyzed come from a registry of 1,450 children in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands whose mothers were confirmed through lab tests to have been exposed to Zika while pregnant. Six percent of the children suffered from birth defects such as small head size and brain and eye damage. Nine percent had at least one neurodevelopmental issue such as seizures or difficulty swallowing. And 1 percent had both.
Margaret Honein, director of the CDC’s Division of Congenital and Developmental Disorders, said in an interview that there appeared to be a wide range of outcomes, with some children more affected than others. She said that some of the children born with severe microcephaly — or a small- er-than-normal head size — do in fact have major impair- ments, as doctors had feared.
“We are still early in the Zika story, and we still have lot to learn about how these chil- dren will grow and develop,” she said.
The mosquito-borne virus made headlines in fall 2015 when researchers identi- fied it as the cause of an outbreak in northeastern Brazil that resulted in a sudden increase in babies being born with abnormally small heads. Researchers were alarmed that the illness — which was previously believed to mostly produce mild symptoms such as a rash and fever — had resulted in such serious problems, and a worldwide effort was launched to investigate the disease and try to prevent further infection.
While Zika continued to spread in 2016, the number of cases of microcephaly was lower than predicted, deep- ening the mystery. In the New England Journal of Medicine, some researchers speculated about “the presence of some other unknown cofactor” that, combined with Zika infection, led to the more severe birth defects.
In Puerto Rico and the other U.S. territories, recent hurricanes have added significant challenges to the care and monitoring of children exposed to Zika. However, it does not seem to have resulted in a surge in Zika cases, and public health officials say they are seeing relatively low levels of transmission in that region. In 2018, in the U.S. territories, there have been a little more than 70 cases.
However, Honein said that given the historical patterns of how viruses move over time, “we expect there will be multiple outbreaks in the future” around the world.
“I think the bottom line is that the Zika story is not over,” she added. “People may feel like it’s behind us. For these children, it’s not over, and we need to know as much as possible so that we can be prepared” in case something similar happens again.