Posted on 10/25/2016 7:07:10 PM PDT by BenLurkin
Zika has left a puzzling and distinctly uneven pattern of damage across the Americas. According to the latest U.N. figures, of the 2,175 babies born in the past year with undersize heads or other congenital neurological damage linked to Zika, more than 75 percent have been clustered in a single region: northeastern Brazil.
The pattern is so confounding that health officials and scientists have turned their attention back to northeastern Brazil to understand why Zika’s toll has been so much heavier there. They suspect that other, underlying causes may be to blame, such as the presence of another mosquito-borne virus like chikungunya or dengue. Or that environmental, genetic or immunological factors combined with Zika to put mothers in the area at greater risk.
Researchers and health officials remain cautious about the lower-than-expected numbers. The latest studies have found more evidence than ever that the virus can inflict severe damage on the developing infant brain, some of which may not be evident until later in childhood.
But researchers so far have learned a lot more about Zika’s potential to do harm than its likelihood of doing so.
Scientists at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are closely watching Puerto Rico, which has reported more than 26,800 cases of Zika. More than 7,000 pregnant women could be infected by the end of the year, according to the CDC.
But although the outbreak has spread this year to more than 50 nations and territories across the Western Hemisphere, U.N. data shows just 142 cases of congenital birth defects linked to Zika so far outside Brazil.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I’ve heard speculation that the teratogenic deformities could be caused by some of the (non-DDT!) chemicals used for mosquito eradication in exactly those sections of Brazil where the damage to the unborn babies occurred.
Yup
Scientists are baffled by lots of things when their income comes from the government
Just call it because of global warming. That, lately, covers all bases.
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