Researchers maintain more women could be losing their pregnancies to the Zika virus without knowing they are infected.
Findings of a probe by California National Primate Research Center at UC Davis investigators published in Nature Medicine determined 26 percent of non-human primates infected with Zika during early stages of pregnancy experienced miscarriage or stillbirth, even though the animals showed few signs of infection.
Authors said prior Zika research only measured miscarriages and stillbirths in women who displayed signs or symptoms of the virus, noting a recent study of women who were known to be infected with Zika revealed five percent did not carry to term or had stillbirths.
“There are limitations to the human studies, which rely on symptomatic infections,” said Dawn Dudley, the study’s lead author and a scientist in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. “Women get enrolled in the studies because they have Zika symptoms, but we know that up to half of people who have Zika don’t show any symptoms at all. So, the pregnancy studies are probably missing half of the people who have Zika.”
Researchers said the Zika virus is known for causing children to be born with a brain abnormality called microencephaly and other malformations, adding disease in human adults includes fever, rash, headache, joint and muscle pain, as well as red eyes.