The case of a pregnant woman in Florida who recently contracted Zika is giving doctors new hope in the fight against the dreaded disease after discovering her child is developing normally despite the infection.
Thirty-eight-year-old Yessica Flores from Miami-Dade County was diagnosed with the Zika infection when she 16 weeks pregnant. She had spent the first several weeks of her pregnancy on a trip to Honduras with her husband, but she's not quite sure if she got the virus from there or back home.
Dr. Christine Curry, one of the physicians treating Flores, said both Honduras and Miami-Dade have active local transmissions of the disease, which makes it difficult to tell where exactly she contracted Zika.
The nature of the test for the virus also doesn't provide much in terms of identifying the type of infection, where it came from or when it occurred. It only tells a doctor whether a patient is positive for Zika.
All Flores and her family can do now is to hope that the child she's carrying is doing fine.
No Signs And Symptoms Of Zika
One of the things medical researchers have learned about Zika is that many of the patients infected with the disease do not show any signs or symptoms. Flores didn't even know she had already contracted the virus until she was tested for the infection by Curry and her university team.
Flores said she didn't experience any of the symptoms typically associated with Zika infection such as fever, chest and leg pains and eye inflammation.
She said she was well aware of the risks of the disease and had taken the necessary steps to keep herself safe from infection.
According to Curry, they're still trying to figure out how long Flores had been infected in relation to her pregnancy. She said what they're discovering is that they need to see ailing patients as quickly as possible.
After getting the result of her test, Flores received an ultrasound immediately to check the health of her baby. One of the most common effects of Zika is microcephaly, which causes unborn children to develop abnormally small heads. Flores' doctors found that the child's head seems to be developing normally.
"She is due in February and so we still have several months to go of repeated ultrasounds and repeated blood tests," Curry explained. "But all the information we have on the growth and development of the baby thus far is the baby is normal."
New Lessons About Zika Virus
Flores is now in her 24th week of pregnancy and doctors are still watching her and her baby's development closely. So far, her case has been helping researchers discover new things about Zika infection that they didn't know before.
"We've been learning a lot about how long people stay PCR positive in their blood, and sort of adding her case and her information to what we know in general, but until the baby is born, you can't really draw conclusions about the consequences," Curry said.
With the spread of Zika continuing to be a major public health concern, doctors stress the importance of prevention in helping curb disease transmissions. This can be done by practicing safe sex between partners and wearing bug spray. Pregnant women should also avoid going to areas where active Zika transmissions have been identified.
