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Significance Of The Virus On Foetuses And Newborns From Infected Mothers Essay

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Significance of the study: Zika virus, also known as ZikV, has been in the spotlight with several studies being carried out to better understand the effects of the virus on foetuses and newborns from infected mothers. This increased interest in the virus is as a result of reported increase in the occurrence of microcephaly in Brazil, an occurrence which researchers suspect to be as a result of a corresponding global increase in the prevalence of this virus (Sarno et al. 2016; WHO 2016) and although a causal association has not yet been confirmed, there is an increasing consensus that the virus is behind not only this increase in microcephaly but also the observed current increase in the number of cases of Guillan-Barre syndrome (GBS) (Heymann et al. 2016; Schuler-Faccini et al. 2016). Furthermore, other reports have linked this virus to other neurological and ophthalmological defects (de Paula Freitas et al. 2016; Martines et al. 2016; Mlakar et al. 2016) and a study by Sarno et al. (2016) have further linked it with hydrops foetal and foetal demise. Due to the uncertainty of links between Zika virus and microcephaly as well as a dearth of knowledge on how the virus produces this teratogenic outcome, this essay has been written with a thesis statement that is that these occurrences are not a mere coincidence but that Zika virus is indeed responsible for the occurrence of microcephaly in foetuses. To achieve this, this paper will highlight results of a research carried out

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