Question

how might Zika lead to microcephaly? 200 or more words please

Answer 1

Microcephaly is known as a condition in which the head of the newborns are much smaller than the normal conditions. Two possibilities may occur due to microcephaly, i.e. the baby's head as stoped developing after the birth or the baby's brain does not developed during the pregnancy period. Even extreme conditions such as sever microcephaly may result in babies, in which the head size of the babies are even smaller. These conditions of microcephaly may lead to severe problems in babies such as developmental delay (speech ), seizures, difficulty in movement or balance, problem in vision and hearing and feeding problems.

One of the main cause of microcephaly is the infection of the mothers with zika virus during pregnancy. High mutation rates in the zika virus is the reason for the fast spreading of the virus among humans. In Brazil, 6158 cases of microcephaly has been reported in 2015, in which 745 cases were due to zika virus. The zika infection is mainly due to infection by Aedes mosquito and also by blood transfussion and sexual contact. The zika transmission from mothers to foetus results in microcephaly.

The zika genome consist of polyprotein, which is cleaved by the host defence mechanism into three parts such as - capsid, envolope and pre-membrane. The mutations in the zika virus helps them to overcome the defensive mechanism of the host and cause infections. Also, there exists several non structural proteins in the zika virus which masks the Virus RNA from recognition of the host defence mechanism. After invading the host defence mechanism these take control of the host cell and starts to spread through out the body.