From Rubella to Zika: pregnancy, disability, abortion | Salim Al-Gailani

Current concerns about Zika and microcephaly recall similar anxieties about maternal infection with Rubella in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. Salim Al-Gailani explains what we can learn by comparing the two diseases. It’s early spring in London. Some of Britain’s leading medical researchers have convened to discuss alarming new evidence linking a virus long presumed to be harmless with a spate of defects in newborn babies. It’s not 2016, it’s 1946, and the disease is not Zika, but German Measles, or Rubella. For most patients Rubella produces only a minor rash and fever. But when contracted by women during early pregnancy, the virus may result in miscarriage, infant death, or a range of often life-shaping disabilities, such as deafblindness. Increased awareness of the risk of maternal rubella in the mid-twentieth century, partly through vivid reports on the ‘crippling’ effects of this disease in the international media, had profound consequences including the development of highly successful mass immunization programmes. Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Science History of science Health Zika virus World news Source Type: news