What do virologists do when they are holed up at home with a productive cold? No idea. But I'm doing some reading of stuff I don't know much about; some historic literature on microcephaly.
I thought the slightly edited quote below, was interesting.[1]
Historic articles describing eye issues in microcephaly diagnoses are also interesting.[2,5] These are in light of similar language describing Brazilian microcephaly diagnoses as being part of a distinct or a unique syndrome.[3,4]
This does beg the question of how well we've catalogued microcephaly's features in the past? With new and emerging technologies and techniques always adding new ways of looking at disease, perhaps we're due for an update.
This is all well outside my area of expertise so take it with a huge grain of salt, but perhaps some of the current event is rediscovery, or even new discovery of something that is not unusual, just not previously captured among microcephaly diagnoses due to genetic issues, other infections or environmental influences?
It would be helpful to see some modern comments/reviews around this topic from experts in this field.
References..
- http://jnen.oxfordjournals.org/content/jnen/13/2/318.full.pdf
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2081695/pdf/procrsmed00586-0039.pdf
- http://annals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2498549
- http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/in-babies-with-microcephaly-unique-damage-wreaked-by-zika/
- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6777726