The Ministry of Health in Singapore has been spraying insecticide in residential areas as the number of locally transmitted Zika cases increase [Xinhua]
Just days after the Zika virus was reported to have spread to Southeast Asia, new medical research appears to indicate that it can lead to brain complications among adults as well.
A study conducted by New York-based Rockefeller University found that the Zika virus can also affect adult brain-cells in mice, results that could additionally spell long-term neurological implications for adult humans.
The study was conducted in conjunction with La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology using mice that were genetically modified to react to the virus in similar ways to humans.
The infection and spread of the virus was tracked using biomarkers which showed that infected regions in the brain displayed evidence of cell death and reduced levels of neuron generation.
Results also showed that Zika primarily targeted a type of brain cell known as neural progenitor cells (NPCs).
The disheartening research news comes as more countries are reporting domestic Zika virus infections.
A 45-year-old woman who lives in Iloilo city in the central Philippines has the virus, Dr Eric Tayag, spokesman at the Health Ministry, told a media briefing last week.
The woman is not pregnant, he said, and was recovering at her home. It was considered “highly likely” she had contracted the virus locally as she had no history of travel to any affected country in the past two weeks, Dr Tayag said.
The Philippines reported its first case of Zika in 2012, that of a teenaged boy in Cebu island in the central Philippines. Four subsequent cases were foreigners.
Malaysia has reported its first case of a pregnant woman with Zika, who lives in a state bordering Singapore where authorities have already recorded 275 cases.
Last week, Malaysia reported its first case of Zika in a woman believed to have caught the virus in Singapore. On Saturday, it reported its first suspected locally transmitted case, a man in the eastern state of Sabah.
The 27-year-old woman in the southern state of Johor is the third person with Zika in Malaysia, where fears of a full-blown outbreak emanating from Singapore are mounting.
“The woman is expecting her first child and is three to four months pregnant,” Malaysia’s health minister, S Subramaniam, said in a statement on the ministry’s Facebook page.
Infected pregnant women can give birth to babies with microcephaly, a deformation marked by abnormally small brains and heads.
Since it was shown that the Zika virus could be transmitted through sexual intercourse, the World Health Organization recommends safe sex or abstinence for up to six months for people returning from Zika-affected zones.
The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies