The Zika virus is already causing global alarm for being the suspected culprit behind the rising number of babies born in Latin America with microcephaly, or a birth defect that causes abnormally small heads.
However, medical practitioners are having reasons to believe that this virus can bring even worse health effects, leading to the death of unborn children.
The unborn child of a Brazilian woman recently died, and doctors reported last week that the seven-month-old foetus virtually had no brain at all.
The Zika virus was found in the very small brain of the foetus, who was found to be suffering not just from microcephaly, but hydranencephaly, a worse condition in which much of the brain is missing and fluid is there instead.
"The whole brain was filled with liquid," Dr. Albert Ko of Yale University, who is studying the Zika virus, said, as quoted by NBC News.
He added that the unborn child's lungs and chest were also found to be filled with liquid.
Doctors also found traces of the Zika virus not just in the body of the baby but also in the amniotic fluid, the liquid that protects the infant inside the mother's womb. This finding strongly suggests that the virus is passed from mother to child in the womb.
"Given the recent spread of the virus, systematic investigation of spontaneous abortions and stillbirths may be warranted to evaluate the risk that Zika virus infection imparts on these outcomes," Ko's team wrote.
What's even more alarming is the fact that the Brazilian woman did not exhibit the normal symptoms of the Zika virus infection—such as fever, muscle pain, conjunctivitis and headache—during her pregnancy. This raises the possibility that the virus can severely affect and even cause the death of a foetus without making the pregnant mother sick.
"The first indication of an abnormal pregnancy was the ultrasound finding of intrauterine growth retardation in the 18th gestational week," the team of doctors stated.
