Zika Virus Linked to Eye Damage Too

A woman holds her granddaughter, left, who was born with microcephaly, and her twin brother in Recife, Brazil, on Feb. 3. A new study shows that newborn eye damage may be another effect of Zika, which has been linked with microcephaly.

Zika virus, the mosquito-borne illness linked to a rise in babies born with brain damage in Brazil, may be responsible for newborn eye damage as well.That’s the finding of a new study published this week in the journalJAMA Ophthalmology. The study, which was conducted in December in Brazil, evaluated 29 infants with microcephaly, an incurable condition linked to Zika virus in which babies are born with unusually small heads.

Twenty-three of the mothers said they had experienced Zika virus signs and symptoms while they were pregnant, including rash, fever, joint pain, headache, and itching, and 18 of them said the symptoms occurred during their first trimester.

Nearly 35 percent of the infants studied had eye abnormalities, but they weren’t necessarily in both eyes. The most common issues were black lesions in the back of the eye, retinal tissue damage, or damage to blood vessels and tissue below the retina

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