Abstract
When the Pan American Health Organization put out an alert last May about the first confirmed cases of Zika virus infection in Brazil, the news barely registered. After all, compared with other mosquito-borne viruses, such as potentially life-threatening dengue and yellow fever, Zika seemed pretty harmless. Only 20% of people infected with Zika even become ill, and their symptoms tend to be mild—fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis. But in January, nine months after the organization raised the alarm, doctors in Brazil reported a disturbing trend that coincided with Zika’s spread across the country. Since October 2015, more than 4,000 babies in Brazil had been born with abnormally small heads and brains—a rare condition known as microcephaly. Although further analysis lowered that figure by 462 cases, the sharp rise nonetheless has experts worried that Zika could be to blame. For comparison, Brazil reported just 147 cases of microcephaly in 2014.
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