Doctors are not only worrying about how to contain the Zika outbreak, especially because of its relationship to microcephaly. They are also alarmed by the severity of defects found in a small number of Brazilian babies with microcephaly.
Consultations among doctors in Brazil and United States have become more intense for the past weeks, ever since the Zika outbreak became even more widespread. Some of the leading authorities claimed that the cases of of babies with malformed brains are really severe compared to simple microcephaly, Reuters Health reported. The authorities warned of the tough road that the families of these babies will take to rear and protect them. The doctors are also worried about more babies having the same conditions if the Zika outbreak is not contained at a much quicker pace.
"We are in the process of very rapid information gathering on what has been seen," Dr. William Dobyns, a geneticist at Seattle Children's Hospital shared. "The condition that I've been able to review, very preliminarily, is more severe than simple microcephaly."
Dr. Dobyns divulged that most of the doctors who reviewed these cases were really astounded. "These children have a very severe form of microcephaly," Dobyns said. "The brain is not just small, it's small with malformations of the cerebral cortex and calcifications. It has the appearance of a very severe, destructive injury to the brain," the doctor added.
The doctor also detailed that worrying with these cases is the excess of spinal fluid between the babies' brain and skull. "If the brain is growing and then suddenly shrinks, then you'll see fluid between the brain and skull," he said. "It has a pattern that suggests that the brain has actually decreased in size."
Meanwhile, NY Times reported that the it was in late August last year when maternity wards in Brazil started to discover the unusual rise of microcephaly cases. "Doctors, pediatricians, neurologists, they started finding this thing we never had seen," said Dr. Celina M. Turchi, who is also an infectious diseases researcher at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.
The researcher shared that suddenly, doctors were noticing more and more children with abnormal facial features and strange heads. Some see as many as four in a day. What was equally astounding was that even with their alarming appearance, most of the babies seemed healthy, eating and crying like other normal babies.
