Saturday, January 14, 2017

Healthy Baby Born to Women with Zika

An article released by Fox News on January 12th, 2017 states that a health baby was born to a women who located acquired Zika in the United States. The women was in Florida when she acquired the virus; therefore, this caused a scare in the Florida tourism industry for fear of further Zika transmission in the future. Now, Zika is no longer deemed a Global Health Emergency by the World Health Organization (WHO) and vaccine development in underway. University Miami Health System and Miller School also released an article in the New England Journal of Medicine containing information about the 23-year old mother with Zika who gave birth to a healthy baby.

The women contracted the virus when she was 23 weeks pregnant and was seen with a rash when she was first diagnosed with the disease. Dr. Lucy Chen, a dermatology resident at Jackson Health System, stated that this patient allowed dermatologists and clinicians to get a detailed look of a Zika-related rash, and now this rash is used to aid physicians in diagnosing the disease. The patient who had no history of traveling to Zika infected countries had first visited Dr. Chen with influenza like symptoms and "small pink bumps" covering her chest and extremities. Laboratory tests were positive for urine samples for two weeks and were positive for blood samples for six weeks.

The baby of the Zika infected mother was born in October of 2016 and was closely monitored for any developmental defects. The baby has currently been diagnosed as healthy (normal cranial structure and size, normal behavioral developments, no calcification) and was tested negative for Zika.

The South Miami Beach area is still considered an area at risk for Zika transmission; however, there have been no Zika cases reported within the past 45 days.  

Check out the article here:
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2017/01/12/baby-born-to-woman-who-locally-acquired-zika-in-us-is-healthy.html

~Michelle Bach (Humans and Viruses 2016-2017)

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