Thanks to a study carried out during the Zika epidemicin the French territories of America with pregnant women and their unborn children, researchers from Inserm, the Pasteur Institute and the University Hospital of Guadeloupe were able to accurately estimate the risk of serious neurological complications for babies.
Several thousand pregnant women who became pregnant during the Zika epidemic were included in this study between March 2016 and August 2017. Those who presented a biologically confirmed Zika virus infection between March 2016 and November 2016 were followed up every day. months until the end of their pregnancy. If a fetal abnormality was detected during an ultrasound, an additional examination of the fetus by MRI was performed.
An anomaly rate of 7%
During this study, the results of which were published in the New England Journal of medicine, the researchers found that the rate of congenital neurological abnormalities in fetuses and babies from this cohort of pregnant women was 7%. A much lower rate than what had been observed in Brazil or in the United States.
But they found that the rate climbs to 12.7% (or more than one in ten babies) when the mother is infected during from the 1st trimester of pregnancy. While the infection rate drops to 3.6% when the mother is infected in the 2nd trimester of pregnancy and to 5.3% when infected in the 3rd trimester.
Read also :
Zika: soon a vaccine for pregnant women?
Zika could affect the health of babies’ eyes
