Zika Lasted Way Longer During Pregnancy
Today the Zika virus has become epidemin in certain countries in Latin America. This dangerous virous, which is spread mainly by infected mosquitos, can cause a mild illness in people, but can also cause some severe defects that are related to brain. The good news is that a new research of Zika Virus on monkeys has shown some implications for human organisms. More specifically, researches at Wisconsin University have found that the virus remains longer in the blood of pregnant monkeys for a longer period of time than usual; in some cases the Zika virus persisted up to 70 days (the usual is 10 days), as well as in non-pregnant monkeys.
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Studies by researchers
The truth is that doctors still don’t know why some pregnant women are likely to give birth to a baby with a Zika virus. The prolonged infections by Zika has various implications in pregnant ladis mainly because this special kind of virus cause microcephaly, which is a severy birth defect, that is mainly characterized by small abnoraml heads of new borns and often is also related to incomplete development of the brain. Moreover, it is also related to a number of other abnormalities, such as neurological ones. But still there are some unknown remains about the way this infections of Zika progress in people, so researchers use rhesus macaque monkeys, in order to perform their studies and come up with definite conclusions.
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Possible explanations
One of the main explanations, according to the researchers for the persistence of this virus during pregnancy is that the immune system of the women who are expected a baby are too compromised, so they are not still in the position to clear all the possible conclusions that are related to Zika virus. Moreover, the researchers use rhesus macaque monkeys in order to study how Zika infects people. Actually the team posts all the data online so that people can know everything they wish about this virus. Moreover they even post a number of ultra sound images of monkeys. They do everything they can in order to be able to speed discoveries about Zika, but still nobody understands the possible range of outcomes for all the children that are infected during pregnancy.
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New born children in Brazil
In Brazil, some of the children that were born from women that were infected are only about one year old right now. So, the researhers can not make definite conclusions whether some of these children, who look nornal, are going to have any kind of problems in their future life. This means that it’s early for any further conclusions, but researchers do whatever is possible to find what causes Zika.