Terrifying Disease May Cause Birth Defects – and Experts Think It’s Coming to the US
By Julia Belluz. The Zika virus, a rare tropical disease that’s causing a panic in Brazil — because it may lead to babies being born with abnormally small heads — has now made its way to Puerto Rico. And experts fear the United States could be next.
Until last year, the Zika virus, which is spread by mosquitoes, was mainly confined to Africa and Asia. But in 2015 the disease made the leap to the Western Hemisphere, affecting more than a million people in Brazil. It’s since spread to Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, and nine other countries. Last week, the first confirmed case in Puerto Rico was reported.
The puzzling spread of Zika is part of an uptick of mosquito-borne illnesses — including West Nile, dengue, and chikungunya — in areas that have never experienced them before.
“It’s spreading really fast,” said Scott Weaver, the director of the Institute for Human Infections and Immunity at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “I think [the Zika virus] is going to be knocking on the doorstep in places like Florida and Texas probably in the spring or summer.”
The overwhelming majority of people who come into contact with Zika — through bites from infected mosquitoes — seem to experience either a flu-like illness or no symptoms at all. (Read more from “Terrifying Disease May Cause Birth Defects – and Experts Think It’s Coming to the US” HERE)
____________________________________
Devastating Virus May Be Sexually Transmitted
By Derrick Aarons. A virologist at the Bernhard-Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine in Hamburg, Germany, has suggested that Zika virus infection is the only vector-borne disease that may be transmitted by sexual intercourse.
The first suggestion that you could get Zika virus infection from both a mosquito as well as a sexual partner came in 2008, when an American scientist contracted Zika in Senegal and fell ill a few days after returning home to northern Colorado. His wife got Zika soon after, even though she had not travelled anywhere far for several months. More weight was placed on this suspicion by research published in 2015 that found the presence of the Zika virus in semen. (Read more about this disease that is causing increasing numbers of birth defects HERE)
Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.
