(credit: CDC)
After months of speculation and mounting data, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officially confirmed Wednesday that the Zika virus does indeed cause microcephaly, a devastating birth defect in which babies are born with small, malformed heads and brains.
Researchers with the agency came to the conclusion after a review of existing data on the virus. There was no single piece of evidence that tipped the scales, the authors note. Rather, the accumulation of data from numerous sources convinced them of the link. Their analysis is published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“This study marks a turning point in the Zika outbreak,” Tom Frieden, director of the CDC, said in a statement. “We are also launching further studies to determine whether children who have microcephaly born to mothers infected by the Zika virus is the tip of the iceberg of what we could see in damaging effects on the brain and other developmental problems.”
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