Why did Zika start causing microcephaly in Brazil?

The strain of Zika virus circulating in the northeastern Brazilian state of Paraíba in 2015 was particularly damaging to the developing brain, report researchers.

More than 1,600 babies were born in Brazil with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads, from September 2015 through April 2016 due to Zika virus. The epidemic took health professionals by surprise because the virus had been known since 1947 and had not been linked to birth defects.

As scientists scrambled to figure out what was going on, one fact stood out: 83% of microcephaly cases came from northeastern Brazil, even though there were recorded Zika infections nationwide.

Dark purple spots in the images of mouse brains indicate dying neurons. The brain of a mouse infected with a strain of Zika virus from Brazil (right) is shrunken and has more dying cells compared with that of a mouse infected with a strain from French Polynesia (left). (Credit: Washington U. School of Medicine in St. Louis)

The Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center at Washington University and the National Institutes of Health supported the work, which appears in the Journal of Neuroscience.

Kevin Noguchi, assistant professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the study’s senior author, speaks about the findings here:

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