PUBLIC HEALTH IMAGE LIBRARY, JAMES GATHANYZika’s march through Latin America is thought to be tied to a rise in instances of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), a serious neurological disorder. A new study, published February 19 in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, has found that among eight countries and regions in the Pacific with Zika outbreaks since 2007, only one—the Solomon Islands in 2015—experienced an increase in GBS numbers among children.
“This could represent confirmation of the utility of increased [GBS] detection for signaling the appearance of Zika virus, or reflect more sensitive public health surveillance following a major cyclone, or be a chance finding given that it was the only country where this occurred,” Adam Craig of the University of Newcastle, Australia, and colleagues wrote in their report.
Craig’s team collected surveillance data on GBS for children under 15 years old, and compared the timing of those cases with outbreaks of Zika. According to the study, the Solomon Islands had a Zika outbreak last year, when nine children were diagnosed with GBS, as opposed to an expected number of two diagnoses.
In other regions with Zika outbreaks, GBS cases did not go up concurrently. “We ...
