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Research with primates revealed that 26% of infected monkeys in early pregnancy had a miscarriage or had stillbirths
An international study of primates suggests that many women may have lost their baby during pregnancy because of zika, unaware that they were infected with the virus.
Research published Monday in the journal Nature Medicine revealed that 26% of zika-infected monkeys at the beginning of pregnancy had a miscarriage or had stillbirths, even if they had no symptoms. .
Read also: USP recruits volunteers to test According to the authors, up to now, human studies have measured that the number of abortions in women with symptoms of the disease.
One of them, conducted earlier this year, showed that 6% of the women infected and badyzed by the scientists aborted, while 1.6% had stillbirths. A miscarriage occurs when the baby is lost before growing up for 20 weeks in the womb.
According to the study's lead author, Dawn Dudley, of Wisconsin's National Primate Research Center, this discovery has important implications for pregnant women infected with the virus. . "Pregnancy loss occurs more frequently in infected primates than in animals that have not been exposed to the virus," she said.
The results, she said, raise concerns about the loss of pregnancy, which may be more common than previously thought. The scientist says studies done so far with humans have very limited results because they are based solely on symptomatic infections. "Women participate in these studies precisely because they have zika symptoms, but we know that more than half of those infected with the virus had no type of symptoms."
The study, consisting of 50 monkeys of different species, five other primate research centers and ten American universities. During the gestation of monkeys infected with zika, scientists monitored the animals' progress by ultrasound to detect fetal heart rate, amniocentesis – a diagnostic method involving the drainage of amniotic fluid – and blood tests.
In American laboratories, scientists were able to control the time and method of infection in a way that would be impossible in human studies, according to Dawn. The results of this study indicate that infection can be monitored in animals and their fetuses.
Microcephaly
For other authors, David O'Connor of the University of Winsonsin-Madison, the findings may indicate that abortions and stillbirths may be even more recurrent problems in mothers infected with the Zika virus than conbad malformations such as microcephaly. "In this case, we will have to reconsider what we know about zika."
See what has already been discovered and what is not yet known about the Zika virus:
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