Medicine
The other side of the Zika Virus
Researchers have now demonstrated a connection between the Zika Virus and a rare nerve disorder. What exactly is the Guillain-Barré syndrome, the spreads currently in Zika-affected regions?
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Brazil’s fight against Zika Virus
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Brazil’s fight against Zika Virus
A researcher at the French Institute Pasteur, have on 1. March 2016, announced that they were able to demonstrate a connection between the Zika Virus, and a nerve disease called Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS).
The researchers had examined in 2013 and 2014, a Zika outbreak on the island of Tahiti in French Polynesia, found on the one hand, that in the average of 2.4 of 10,000 Zika-Infected GBS developed. Thus, the probability of Contracting the disease, if you are Zika, about 20 times higher than in healthy people.
All 42 GBS-patients, which were identified during the Zika outbreak, had previously undergone a Zika infection. With 93 percent of them less than three months back.
“The connection between the two diseases is therefore about as strong as that between tobacco smoke and lung cancer,” said Arnaud Fontanet, who led the study, to AFP.
GBS can be fatal
Even with optimal treatment conditions, approximately five percent of GBS die normally, patients of the disease. For others it takes weeks or months, until the severe symptoms subside.
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The body’s immune system attacking the nervous system. Patients suffer from sensation disorders and paralysis of the limbs, severe breathing problems may occur.
The eruption on the island of Tahiti was, however, less serious: All 42 patients survived. But even after three months, more than half of the patients were still in the hospital.
“In areas affected by Zika, we need to think about a reinforcement of the capacities in the intensive care,” said Fontanet. “We now know that a certain number of patients will develop GBS, of which about 30 percent on the intensive care unit, including artificial ventilation.”
Researchers have long suspected that the Zika Virus Microcephaly in the newborn caused. The skull is deformed hard and the children are suffering from severe cognitive developmental disabilities. Since October 2015 in Brazil almost 600 babies were born with this disease is four times more than normal.
The suspicion has prompted the world health organization (WHO), an international health emergency due to the rapid spread of Zika Virus.
fs/hf (afp, ap, Reuters)