WIKIPEDIA, MUHAMMAD MUDHI KARIMThe World Health Organization (WHO) today (February 12) said that confirmation of a causal link between Zika virus and two serious neurological conditions—microcephaly in babies and Guillain-Barré syndrome—is just weeks away. “We have a few more weeks to be sure to demonstrate causality, but the link between Zika and Guillain-Barré is highly probable,” Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO assistant director-general for health systems and innovation, told reporters (via Reuters).
The WHO’s prediction comes on the heels of the strongest evidence yet tying Zika to birth defects.
Following the autopsy of a 29-week-old fetus aborted because of microcephaly, researchers recovered from the brain the full genome of Zika virus. The finding, published this week (February 10) in the New England Journal of Medicine, is considered by some to be the most convincing bit of evidence to date that Zika can cause brain malformations.
“This is the critical point: you have a mother who’s infected, a fetus that’s abnormal, and in the fetus, you have the genetic signature of the virus,” Andrew Pekosz, director of the Center for Emerging Viruses and Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told The Verge. “This is ...
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