Scientists probe Zika’s link to neurological disorder

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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/scientists-probe-zika%E2%80%99s-link-neurological-disorder?tgt=nr
About one in 4,000 people infected by Zika in French Polynesia in 2013 and 2014 got a rare autoimmune disease called Guillain-Barré syndrome, researchers estimate in a study published online February 29 in the Lancet. Of 42 people diagnosed with Guillain-Barré in that outbreak, all had antibodies that signaled a Zika infection. Most also had recent symptoms of the infection. In a control group of hospital patients who did not have Guillain-Barré, researchers saw signs of Zika less frequently: Just 54 out of 98 patients tested showed signs of the virus.

The message from this earlier Zika outbreak is that countries in the throes of Zika today “need to be prepared to have adequate intensive care beds capacity to manage patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome,” writes study coauthor Arnaud Fontanet of the Pasteur Institute in Paris and colleagues, some of whom are from French Polynesia.

The study, says public health researcher Ernesto Marques of the University of Pittsburgh, “tells us what I think a lot of people already thought: that Zika can cause Guillain-Barré syndrome.” As with Zika and the birth defect microcephaly (SN: 2/20/16, p. 16), though, more work needs to be done to definitively prove the link.