Monday 1 February 2016

Understanding the link between Zika Virus and Microcephaly (babies with small heads)

Baby with small head (microcephaly) born to a woman
infected with
Zika virus. Image credit to  CTV News

In the last few months, the world still recovering from the terror of the Ebola virus, has woken up to a new one in the shape of the Zika virus. And what makes this one a terrorist, unlike Ebola which kills its hosts and is very highly contagious, is the strongly emerging evidence of it being responsible for a condition called microcephaly in babies of mothers infected with the virus while they were pregnant (a medical condition in which babies are born with abnormally small heads) as the virus has been isolated from the umbilical cord of these babies and from their mothers' blood. Microcephaly results from either a small brain substance volume; the premature closure of the sutures of the skull bones, or defects in skull bone growth and development, all of which then limit the growth of the brain substance to below the normal size. While the cause of these problems leading to an abnormally small head is multi-factorial, ranging from hereditary genetic disorders to environmental players like inadequate intake of some vital supplements by the pregnant woman and exposure to radiation in pregnancy---it's very vital to work out, in the smallest of details, how the Zika virus has come to be a player and the various mechanisms with which it likely employs to achieve this mischievous feat.