The chikungunya virus rarely harms the infants of mothers who are infected early in pregnancy, but frequently causes serious issues including persistent brain injury to babies born to mothers who get the virus near the time of delivery. This was released on March, 17, 2008 in the open-access journal PLoS Medicine.
Chikungunya causes an illness with many similarities to dengue fever, and can induce symptoms such as fever, rash, and lasting joint and muscle pains, usually within 3-7 days of infection. It is generally found in tropical regions such as sub-Saharan Africa and in Southeast Asia, India, and the Western Pacific, where its vectors, the Aedes mosquitoes, reside.
It was first isolated in Tanzania in the early 1950s, and since then, outbreaks of chikungunya fever have occurred every 7-8 years. A prolific chikungunya outbreak occurred in 2005 and 2006 on the Island of La Réunion. During this outbreak, information was collected in the southern part of the island on more than 7,000 women in delivery and their babies by physicians from the Island of La Réunion and Marc Lecuit of the Institut Pasteur in Paris.
When examining the mothers, tt was discovered that 700 of them had been infected with the chikungunya virus at a time between conception and 3 days prior to delivery. Among all of these women, three early fetal deaths were linked to the infection, but no other mothers had passed on the virus to their children. However, of the 39 mothers who were infected within 2 days before or after delivery, 19 of the babies became infected themselves. All infected babies were born healthy, but developed symptoms such as fever, weakness, and pain within 3-7 days. Ten of the infected babies became seriously ill, including nine that developed brain swelling, and two with bleeding in the brain. Four of these children were evaluated as disabled at the end of the study several months later.
In conclusion, the researchers make the statement that clinicians and public health officers should be sensitive to the threat posed by the chikungunya virus to newborn children. Whenever outbreaks occur, they say, clinicians should monitor babies exposed to the virus near delivery for a week after birth, and be primed during this time period to provide them additional treatment in the hospital.
Thomas Scott of the University of California, Davis and colleagues, who were not involved in the study, contributed a related Policy Forum in which they describe suppression of the disease carrying mosquitoes as a practical method of controlling urban dengue, yellow fever, and chikungunya viruses.
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Multidisciplinary prospective study of mother-to-child chikungunya virus infections on the Island of La Reunion
Gerardin P, Barau G, Michault A, Bintner M, Randrianaivo H, et al.
PLoS Med 5(3): e60.
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Defining Challenges and Proposing Solutions for Control of the Virus Vector Aedes aegypti
Amy C. Morrison, Emily Zielinski-Gutierrez, Thomas W. Scott*, Ronald Rosenberg
PLoS Med 5(3): e68
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Written by Anna Sophia McKenney